ISLAMIST LEADER SLAMS BUSH ON SOMALIA POLICY

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Islamist leader slams Bush on Somalia policy.

By Guled Mohamed

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - The hardline leader of newly powerful Islamists said all of Somalia must be ruled by sharia law and U.S. President George W. Bush should be prosecuted for bankrolling defeated secular warlords.

"There is no Muslim nation that is safe from his (Bush's) oppression. He should stop his wrong leadership," Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, told Reuters by telephone from his rural base.
"He used the warlords to kill people. If it's possible for him to be charged, he deserves to be brought to justice," Aweys, an army colonel turned cleric, said.

"It's compulsory to rule Somalia by sharia law," added Aweys, military mastermind of a campaign that has given the Islamists control of Mogadishu and a large part of the country.

The Islamists say U.S. officials supplied suitcases full of cash to warlords grouped in a self-styled anti-terror coalition, an accusation widely believed by analysts, regional diplomats and people in Mogadishu.

The U.S. government never commented directly, but insisted it had the right to support any groups opposing extremists in the Horn of Africa nation that Washington fears could harbour al Qaeda-linked radicals.

Aweys, who is on a U.S. list of 189 individuals or entities "linked to terrorism", said Washington was lying about him and accusations that the Islamists were harbouring three foreign extremists accused of 1998 and 2002 bombings in east Africa.

"The American views cannot be trusted. Whatever they say is mostly lies, nobody can take their word anymore."

Aweys urged Bush to stop "open aggression and threats" towards the Muslim world.

"We are being denied our right to be Muslims," he added in a lengthy conversation from Guriel village in the central region of Galgadud, some 350 km (220 miles) west of Mogadishu, where he is working to strengthen an Islamic court he founded last year.

"If he (Bush) doesn't stop his aggression, these people (Muslims) will go after him," he added in the weekend interview, conducted before Sunday's bloody Mogadishu battle between the Islamists and a pocket of the city still in warlord hands.

SHARIA LAW

Aweys said the world should respect the sharia law Islamists were installing in Mogadishu and other areas they have captured across southern Somalia.

"I want the world to respect our sharia and beliefs and cooperate with us and also recognise our administrations and humanity. They should work with us as free people who have a right to choose their own future and religion," he said.

The Islamists at first tried present a moderate face but now strict sharia such as whipping has been applied to criminals and Islamic courts announced plans to stone five rapists to death.

A leading Mogadishu cleric has said that Muslims who do not pray five times a day should be killed, fuelling foreign fears that they are planning Taliban-style rule. Somalis generally practice a moderate form of Islam.

The Islamist movement, which sprung out of sharia courts, is in a political standoff with the weak, Western-backed interim government based in a provincial town. Somalia has been without central rule since the 1991 ousting of a military dictator.

The two sides are to meet in Sudan for talks on July 15. "We hope an agreement can be reached," Aweys said. The government says it will only deal with moderates among the Islamists.

"The good thing about the Somali people is that once they meet they normally agree as long as there is no external influence. Our only fear is interference by Ethiopia and their likes including the Americans," Aweys said.

The Islamists say neighbouring Ethiopia has sent troops to stop their advance and support the interim government, an accusation denied by Addis Ababa.



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