(Corrects position of additional information to para 7) By Sahal Abdulle MOGADISHU, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Somalia's interim government welcomed a U.S. proposal at the U.N. Security Council to deploy east African peacekeepers, but the newly powerful Islamists who have seized control of most of the country rejected it. Washington's draft resolution would also ease a widely violated 14-year-old United Nations arms embargo on the Horn of Africa country to let the peacekeepers legally bring in their arms and train and equip local security forces. Somali's interim government is Western-backed but virtually powerless. Residents said on Saturday the Islamists had seized another town from goverment forces. The government's information minister, Ali Jama Jangali, said he hoped the draft would be adopted quickly. "Our position is very clear. We were the ones who requested this so that we can train our own forces. This is a move in the right direction," he told Reuters from the administration's seat in the provincial town of Baidoa. Word of the U.S. initiative set off concern this week when an influential Brussels-based think tank and European experts warned it could backfire by undermining the government, strengthening the Islamists and leading to a wider, regional war. Eritrea, one of the countries accused of breaking the arms embargo, said the "ill-advised" U.S. proposal would "exacerbate the civil strife that has bedevilled Somalia for the past fifteen years and plunge (it) into an intractable quagmire". In the latest reports of troop movements, residents said fighters loyal to the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) had taken over the town of Diinsoor, some 120 km (75 miles) southwest of Baidoa. Local resident Abukar Ali Jale said Islamists riding more than 30 "technicals" -- pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns, rockets and artillery -- were now in the town. There were no immediate reports of casualties. An Islamist spokesman said residents had invited the SICC into Diinsoor. He denounced the U.S. draft resolution. "The Americans have no right to ask for foreign troops for Somalia," Islamist Abdirahman Ali Mudey told a news conference in Mogadishu. "We are against any foreign troops coming to Somalia, no matter where they are from." AL QAEDA CHARGES After routing U.S.-backed warlords from the capital in June, the SICC seized much of the south -- directly challenging the authority of the government. The United States says the SICC, born of a coalition of sharia courts, is harbouring al Qaeda operatives who threaten the region and elsewhere, a charge the Islamists deny. Stressing that its only goal was to support peace and stability in Somalia through "an inclusive political process", Washington's draft resolution would call on the SICC to halt any further military expansion and to reject individuals "with an extremist agenda or links to international terrorism". But it would also call for "credible dialogue" between the Islamists and the government. A third round of Arab League-sponsored peace talks collapsed on Nov. 1 in Sudan. The U.N. measure would exclude peacekeepers from bordering states like Ethiopia, which diplomats say has sent thousands of troops into Somalia to prop up the administration in Baidoa. Addis Ababa denies that, and says it has only sent in several hundred military trainers. (Additional reporting by Irwin Arieff in New York and Jack Kimball in Asmara)
