JOHANNESBURG, Jan 13 (Reuters) - President Thabo Mbeki said Somalia needed African support to solve its crisis but he offered no hint whether South African troops would join any peacekeeping operations there. "For the sake both of Somalia and our Continent as a whole, Africa has no choice but to come to the aid of this sister African country," he said in a letter posted on his African National Congress Web site, ANC Today on Friday. Somali government forces backed up by Ethiopian troops with heavy equipment and air power waged a two-week war in December against Islamist fighters who took control of the capital Mogadishu in June from U.S.-backed warlords and captured large parts of southern Somalia over the next six months. The Islamists were forced out of Mogadishu on Dec. 28. Remnants of the movement fled south toward the Kenyan border and on Monday, the United States launched air strikes on that region targeting what Washington said were al Qaeda members among the Islamist forces. Mbeki said he agreed with the African Union and the United Nations that the U.S. air strikes would not help resolve the crisis and could fuel new unrest. "(It) would add oil to the fires that are burning in the Middle East," he said. "In addition, some Somalis have been quoted as saying that these air strikes were carried out as an act of vengeance for the death of 18 U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu in 1993 and the shooting down of the U.S. 'Black Hawk' helicopter," he added in reference to the last overt U.S. military incursion in Somalia. "As Africans we will have to do everything necessary to overcome the old and new historic problems that have placed Somalia on our agenda as an unresolved problem of the African Revolution," Mbeki said. Ethiopia wants to pull out its troops from Somalia within weeks. But there are fears the government, which lacks a national power-base or truly popular support, could implode if that happens without peacekeepers replacing them. African and Western diplomats have been working to agree on an African peacekeeping operation for Somalia. The African Union and East African body IGAD say they are willing in principle to send more than 8,000 peacekeepers into Somalia, if funding is forthcoming and member nations provide troops and equipment. South Africa has been mentioned as a possible source of some of those troops but Mbeki did not mention in his letter whether he would provide soldiers to keep the peace in Somalia.
