Report Details U.S.-Ethiopia Cooperation

An Ethiopian official denied Friday a report in The New York Times that U.S. troops used Ethiopia as a staging ground for attacks against al Qaeda leaders in Somalia last month.

"This is simply a total fabrication," Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, told The Associated Press.

The Times report, published Friday, cited unnamed American sources officials from several U.S. agencies with a hand in Somalia policy as saying the U.S. soldiers used an airstrip in Ethiopia to mount strikes against Islamic militants in Somalia.

Officials cited in the report also confirmed that members of Task Force 88, a secret Special Operations unit, were deployed in Ethiopia and Kenya, crossing the border into Somalia.

These efforts to disrupt terrorist networks inside Somalia have been termed a partial success, with several militants killed or captured, but with leading al Qaeda figures Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam — suspects in the 1998 U.S. Embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania — still at large.

The Times reported that the close relationship between the Pentagon and Ethiopia had included the sharing of battlefield intelligence on the Islamists' positions.

In addition, John D. Negroponte, the then-director of national intelligence, authorized the diversion of U.S. spy satellites to provide information for Ethiopian troops.

According to officials quoted by the Times, for several years the Pentagon has trained Ethiopian troops in camps near the Somalia border for counterterrorism operations. These included the Agazi Commandos — Ethiopian special forces taking part in offensive operations in Somalia.

U.S. officials earlier acknowledged two airstrikes over Somalia in January, but had given few details. The strikes were reported to have been conducted by U.S. forces based in another Horn of Africa country, Djibouti, though officials had not confirmed that.

U.S. ships had also patrolled off Somalia's coast in search of al Qaeda members thought to be fleeing Somalia following Ethiopia's December invasion.
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