DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Dec. 26 —  Amid growing speculation that Somalia could be next in the so-called U.S. war on terror, President Abdiqassim Salad Hassan denied allegations that his country harbored militants from Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network in a newspaper interview published Wednesday. Hassan also said U.S. delegations sent to the Horn of Africa country had found no such links.

“AMERICAN DELEGATIONS have visited Somalia lately, and these delegations did not see any terrorist camps or groups,” Hassan told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.
       Somalia, named as one of the states Washington could target in a widened war on terror beyond Afghanistan, has lacked a central government since 1991 and is controlled by Hassan’s transitional government and rival warlords.
       “The United States knows well there are no terrorist camps in Somalia; therefore we see no acceptable reason for an American strike against Somalia,” Hassan said.
       “Somalia has no one belonging to al-Qaida,” he said.
       “We are exerting intense efforts to convince the United States we are combating internal terrorism and chaos and that we are in a dire need for its assistance and cooperation in this respect,” Hassan added.
       Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, Washington suspected bin Laden of masterminding the attacks and named the Somali al-Itihad al-Islamiya movement on a list of groups linked to his Islamist al-Qaida network. 
“The Somali al-Itihad al-Islamiya organization has been dissolved and has no actual presence. There cannot be a link between two sides while one does not exist,” Hassan told the Arabic-language newspaper.
       There has been speculation the al-Itihad group remains active in parts of Somalia including the northern coastal town of Las Qoray in the Puntland region.
       But the president of the autonomous region, Jama Ali Jama, insisted on Tuesday the area had been free of militants for almost a decade.
Al-Itihad first came to prominence in the early 1990s as a military group aiming to create a unified Islamic state in Somalia and an ethnic Somali region in neighboring Ethiopia
It claimed responsibility for several bomb attacks in the Ethiopian capital in 1996, but Somali experts say it appears to have shifted its focus to building a political base.
 
PEACE DEAL
       In another sign Somalia was trying to head off any direct U.S. military action, Hassan’s government on Monday signed a peace deal with several opposition factions and pledged to cooperate in the fight against terrorism.
       The Kenyan-brokered Somali peace deal calls for the establishment of an “all-inclusive government” in Mogadishu in one month’s time that would share power among all Somali clans.
However, some of Somalia’s key warlords, including Muse Sude Yalahow, Hussein Aideed and Abdullahi Yussuf, did not attend the talks in Kenya, and observers say peace in Somalia is impossible without their cooperation.
       “The parties will also encourage all those political players who have hitherto remained outside the peace process to join in with the objective of widening and deepening the process of national reconciliation,” the communiqué said.