MOGADISHU, Nov 23: Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi said here on Thursday his country had completed preparations for war with neighbouring Somalia's powerful Islamist movement, alongside faltering peace efforts.

Mr Meles told parliament that the Islamists, who have declared holy war on Ethiopian troops deployed to Somalia to protect the weak internationally backed Somali government, were a `clear and present danger’ to his country.

Shortly after Mr Meles' announcement, the Islamists said in Mogadishu they were ready to defend themselves from a `reckless and war-thirsty’ Ethiopia and invited a US delegation to visit in an apparent bid to cool the situation.

“This group represents a clear threat to Ethiopia,” Mr Meles told Ethiopian lawmakers in Addis Ababa, which denies UN experts' claims of having sent thousands of troops to Somalia but admits to sending military advisers.

“To resist this clear and present danger, the policy of this government is first to try to solve the problem through negotiation and dialogue,” he said.

“So far, our attempts have not been successful.” When any country faces that type of danger it has the full right to defend itself against this threat,” Mr Meles said. “To exercise this right we have been preparing for this kind of response, because it is our responsibility. The government has completed that kind of preparations.” However, opposition lawmakers refused to accept a motion endorsing the prime minister’s statements, calling it tantamount to a declaration of war and forcing a delay in the vote in order for revisions to be made.

“This motion needs to be amended and negotiated with the parties' representatives in the parliament,” opposition MP Been Petros said.

Mainly Christian Ethiopia has watched with growing concern the rise on its south-eastern border of the Islamists, who seized Mogadishu in June and now control most of southern and central Somalia.

With a large ethnic Somali population, Ethiopia fears radicalization of its sizable Muslim minority by the Islamists, some of whom are accused of links to Al-Qaeda, who have imposed strict Shariat law in areas they control.

In Mogadishu, senior members of the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS) met to plot strategy after Mr Meles's address, delivered after the Islamists claimed to have ambushed several Ethiopian military convoys near the Somali government seat of Baidoa.

“If Ethiopia is ready for war, we are very ready for the defence of our country,” said SICS spokesman Abdurahim Ali Muddey. “But we urge Ethiopia to refrain from its reckless, war-thirsty behaviour.

“We are not a threat to Ethiopia, but the presence of its troops in our homeland is a serious security risk to Somalia as well as Ethiopia,” he said.

On Sunday and Tuesday, the Islamists said holy warriors had carried out attacks on Ethiopian military targets around Baidoa, the only government-held city, about 250kms northwest of Mogadishu.

As tension soared, Muddey said the Islamists had invited the United States to send a delegation to Mogadishu `to see what is happening in Somalia’ and hear in person their objections to a US proposal that would allow peacekeepers.

But a positive response was unlikely as the United States accuses some in the Islamist movement of links with Al Qaeda and harbouring suspects in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Ethiopia is one of 10 countries, along with Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, accused of violating a 1992 UN arms embargo on Somalia by sending weapons and other military goods to the Somali rivals.

The build-up has alarmed UN experts and raised fears of full-scale war in Somalia that could engulf the Horn of Africa region, drawing in Ethiopia and its arch-for neighbour Eritrea.

Peace talks aimed at averting all-out war collapsed earlier this month in Khartoum, with the Islamists demanding the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops as a pre-condition to meet government delegates.—AFP