MOGADISHU, Somalia

   Somalia on Wednesday accused Israel and other unnamed countries of providing military advisers to assist Ethiopia in fighting Somalia-backed secessionist guerrillas in Ethiopia's eastern Ogaden region.

Information Minister Abdiqaasim Salad Hassan told a press conference: "The Israelis are assisting as pilots and in the air force,
and there are others." He refused to name their nationality.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

Since ending a quarter century of military dependence on the United States under the late Emperor Haile Selassie, the Marxist
government of Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam has turned to the Soviet Union for arms.

In a related development, guerrillas of the Western Somalia Liberation Front said they launched a successful attack against the
Ethiopian Military Academy in Harrar, in northern Ogaden, earlier this week. They said the attackers killed several officers.

No independent confirmation of the attack was available.

The Front spokesman also said the Ethiopian air force continues to mount regular air strikes against villages and towns in
Ogaden as it builds up for an expected drive against their forces.

Some 40,000 Ethiopian troops are reportedly preparing a major counter-offensive against the guerrilla forces, but so far
Ethiopian troops have penetrated no further than Harrar, the spokesman said.

Abdiqaasim told the news conference that the guerrillas are receiving moral and material support from Somalia. Somalia claims
that the Ogaden region is part of its territory and is occupied by the Ethiopians.

The Somalia government also claims part of northern Kenya as its territory but again denied Kenyan charges that thousands of
Somali troops attacked a Kenyan police post near the border earlier this month.

"We believe the clash might have occured between the liberation forces fighting in areas in nearby Ethiopian-occupied territory
and the Kenyan police," Abdiqaasim said.

Diplomats here say guerrillas regularly pass through northern Kenya on their way to fight in the southern Ogaden region and that this was the most likely cause of the clash.

A Somalia delegation headed by Vice President Hussein Kulmir will travel to Nairobi on Thursday to deliver a message to
Kenya's President Jomo Kenyatta. Somalia is expected to repeat its desire to solve its territorial dispute with Kenya through
negotiation rather than military solutions.

The Associated Press (AP)
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