Top Islamic leader Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed led the delegation that met over the weekend with Ethiopia’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs Tekeda Alemu in Djibouti, said Ibrahim Hassan Adow, the Islamic group’s foreign affairs chief. They met on the sidelines of a meeting between Ahmed’s group and staff of the seven-nation Intergovernmental Authority on Development.

The Islamic leaders "want a stable region and have good relations with our neighbors. But we cannot hold talks with Ethiopia unless it withdraws its forces inside the country. This is the main difference between us," Adow said.

Tekeda conveyed Ethiopia’s concerns "at this time of tension," said Wahide Belay, an Ethiopian Foreign Affairs ministry spokesman.

The minister "told them that Ethiopia is trying to avoid this clash, even though they have violated our rights and sovereignty," Wahide said on Monday.

The secretariat of Intergovernmental Authority on Development issued a statement after their meeting with the Islamic group, known as the Council of Islamic Courts , calling "for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Somalia and respect for the territorial integrity of Somalia and appeals to all countries to observe the U.N. arms embargo on Somalia."

The Council of Islamic Courts has since June seized the capital, Mogadishu, and most of Somalia’s south, sidelining a weak government that is internationally recognized and backed by Ethiopia. The government controls just one town, Baidoa.

A number of small-scale skirmishes have been reported in recent weeks between Ethiopian troops and Islamic militia, stirring fears of a wider, perhaps even regional, war.

Ethiopia, fearing the rise of an Islamic fundamentalist state on its border, backs the government. Ethiopia’s regional rival, Eritrea, is supporting the Islamic movement.

Also on Monday, hundreds of people demonstrated in Mogadishu against a draft U.N. resolution the U.S. circulated late Friday that would authorize the deployment of a regional military force to protect the fragile government as well as ease an arms embargo to allow the peacekeeping force to operate.

The draft is expected to be discussed on Monday at the U.N.

At the protest rally held in Mogadishu Stadium, the Islamic courts’ main leader, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, said that if the resolution is adopted, it would ignite a major regional conflict.

The "U.N. must stop its clear aggression and bias, if not, I swear in the name of God Muslims as one body will defend themselves," Aweys told the crowd, which included school children and women, some of whom carried assault rifles.

The protesters carried placards reading: the "Bush administration is a sheep in wolf’s clothes, we don’t think his resolution is the solution for Somalia," and "There is no need for peacekeepers while Somalia has peace."

(AP)