(IPS) analysis Reports that major US military operations are being planned in Somalia as part of the next stage in the 'war against terrorism' are exaggerated, knowledgeable sources say.

Washington has deployed a nine-man intelligence team to the breakaway Somali region of Puntland, where Ethiopian troops have been present for the past five years, but the move does not portend larger military action, these sources add.

The team, which reportedly includes military personnel operating under the command of intelligence agencies, is scouting opportunities to snatch, possibly in a joint operation with Ethiopia, as many as a dozen suspected associates of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network who are living in Puntland and Mogadishu, Somalia's capital.

Ethiopia, which sent troops into Puntland to crush Oromo rebels and an Islamist militia group linked to Osama, the al-Itihaad al Islamiya (Islamic Unity), has been trying to persuade Washington that the group remains a potent force both in Puntland and in the new transitional Somali government in Mogadishu.

In October, the Ethiopian ambassador at the United Nations accused Somalia of harbouring international terrorists, a charge strongly denied by Somalia's transitional president, Abdulkassim Salat Hussein.

Exaggerated presence

Washington has concluded that Addis Ababa exaggerated the group's presence and strength in hopes of persuading the United States to help oust the regime in Mogadishu, which enjoys support from Djibouti, Egypt and Addis Ababa's nemesis, Eritrea.

''The Ethiopians have been telling us left and right that there are a bunch of al-Qaeda in Mogadishu,'' said one government expert on the Horn of Africa region who asked not to be identified.

It is true, he added, that there are individuals who have been associated with both Itihaad and al-Qaeda and that some of them have trained in Afghanistan. However, the US administration has spent the past two months in an intensive review of intelligence material including dozens of satellite photos from former Itihaad training camps, and has concluded that the group poses little if any threat.

''I think the administration, including the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and the Pentagon, now recognises the danger of full cooperation with Ethiopia - that it could get us in deep trouble in Somalia - and that Itihaad is not much of a threat,'' the source said.

''The Ethiopians crushed Itihaad in 1997 and it basically no longer exists as an organisation,'' he added.

Planning major operations

Senior US officials have fed speculation in recent weeks that they were planning major operations in Somalia, where clan-based politics and warfare and lack of any government capable of exerting control over its territory bear some similarities to the situation in Afghanistan.

''It's a country virtually without a government, a country that has a certain al-Qaeda presence already,'' Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said on Monday.

At the same time, Washington has substantially beefed up its naval presence along Somalia's coast and in and around the Gulf of Aden.

However, according to the Wall Street Journal, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter Kansteiner, who is currently travelling through Africa, told Ethiopian leaders earlier this week that, while Washington hopes to continue cooperating with Addis in Somalia, it would look askance at any large-scale Ethiopian military operation against Mogadishu.

Somalia holds bad memories for the Pentagon. Under Bush's father, Washington led a UN peacekeeping mission there in December 1992. Within 18 months, however, the United States found itself engaged in a bloody and ultimately disastrous manhunt for renegade faction leader Mohammed Farah Aideed.

Washington began withdrawing its forces after a disastrous helicopter raid on a suspected Aideed hideout in Mogadishu in October 1993 that ended with 18 US soldiers and hundreds of Somali civilians and militia fighters killed. The last US troops left Somalia in March 1994.

Tight constraints

The fiasco resulted in the enactment of tight constraints on US participation in UN peacekeeping missions, especially in Africa.

Since the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon, some analysts have tried to tie the ill-fated 1993 raid in Mogadishu to Osama, al-Qaeda and Itihaad, although the evidence to support this thesis has proven meagre. Ironically, Aideed's son, who aspires to become Somalia's next president, is allied with Ethiopia and living in Addis Ababa.

Since Sept 11, Somalia has figured in Washington's calculations chiefly as a source of indirect financing for al-Qaeda.

The US Treasury has frozen the assets of al Barakaat, a global financial network used by expatriate Somalis in the United States and elsewhere to send funds to their relatives back home.

The Treasury says the organisation diverted transaction fees to raise millions of dollars for al-Qaeda and Itihaad, allegations that have not yet been tested in court but which have disrupted the remittance of tens of millions of dollars to families in Somalia.

US officials depict the current operations both in Puntland and off the Somali coast as designed mainly to dissuade Osama and other al-Qaeda leaders, who are presumably besieged in Afghanistan, that an attempt to escape to Somalia would be futile.

''They're saying, 'don't think about going to Somalia because we're already there','' said one source privy to senior-level meetings who noted that US warships are intercepting and searching a growing number of ships in the area.