A powerful Somali Islamic group on Sunday distanced itself from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden while the government blasted him for voicing support for the Islamists and warning against deploying international forces in the shattered African nation.
"The comments made by Osama bin Laden are like any other statement made by politicians or any other person who is expressing his views on the change of political landscape in Somalia," said Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the former leader of the Islamic courts.
"These are personal comments and we have nothing to say at this point," he told reporters in the capital Mogadishu.
According to an audiotape attributed to him and posted on the Internet Saturday, the second in as many days, bin Laden, the world's most wanted man, came out strongly against deploying peacekeepers in Somalia, which has lacked an effective government for the last 15 years. The speaker warned "countries of the world against responding to America and sending international forces to Somalia," vowing to fight any such troops in Somalia and "reserving the right" to "punish" these countries on their own soil "and anywhere possible."
Somali transitional Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi blasted Laden and said his comments confirmed the presence of extremists in Somalia.
"Osama bin Laden is claiming to be a religious scholar in Islam and we say that is not true," Gedi told reporters in Baidoa, the temporary base of the transitional government, about 250 kilometres (155 miles) north-west of the capital. "Long before him, his parents and his ancestors, we were Muslims and we were practising Islam." "His statements show the international community that he (bin Laden) has representation in Somalia. He wants to provoke the world to attack Somalia," Gedi said.
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