Not quite the last Harar
 

   On Monday the Western Somali Liberation Front announced that it had at last vanquished the Ethiopian garrison at Harar;
but by Wednesday it had back-tracked and said that fighting was still going on in the city, although it claimed that the Somalis
had the upper hand.  Meanwhile, Addis Ababa radio, which had so recently asserted that Ethiopian troops were in full control
of Jijiga on the very day that 20 western journalists sipped tea there as guests of the Somalis, was claiming that all was well at
Harar and that the Somali attack there had been repulsed.

Truth, in the Ogaden war, is very much in the eye of the beholder, and there are no impartial reporters at Harar.  But the
Western Somali Liberation Front does not often claim victories it has not won.  Its Wednesday statement is consistent with
reports coming from Mogadishu and Djibouti that the Somalis have outflanked the Ethiopian defences at Babile, seized three
mountain peaks around Harar, and disrupted relief convoys coming to the city from Diredawa, 35 miles to the north.  After
being bogged down for two months, the Somali guerrillas could still soon take Harar.

If it falls, Diredawa will be in obvious jeopardy, and there will be little to prevent the Somalis pushing forward to the Awash
valley, their ultimate objective.  If they thus consolidate their control of the Ogaden, the Somalis' need for a new arms supplier to replace their dismissed Russian ex-patron will be less urgent.  What President Siad Barre has in mind now, therefore, is as much a matter of winning friends and influencing people as it is of getting tanks and guns.

A Somali delegation made up of the vice-president, Mr Kulmie Afrah, the foreign minister, Mr Abdul Barre (the president's
son), and the chief of economic affairs, Sheikh Nur, arrived in Britain on Monday for talks with Mr Callaghan and the foreign
secretary, Dr Owen.  Before leaving for Bonn on Tuesday afternoon, Mr Afrah drew attention to the fact that he had not
brought the Somali minister of defence with him, and insisted that the main purpose of his mission was not to buy arms.  Arms
were on the agenda of the London talks, he said, but they had, predictably, been refused "for the moment at any rate".
However, Britain had promised more economic aid to Somalia through the EEC.

The talks in Bonn on Wednesday followed much the same lines.  Somalia's co-operation with West Germany over the operation at Mogadishu to free the hijacked Lufthansa passengers has already brought it more German aid.  But West Germany, like Britain, is not likely to sell it military hardware at present.  The Somali delegation, with $300m from Saudi Arabia in its pocket, has set its hopes on being able to spend much of it on arms in France.   It will be in Paris for two days before going on to Rome.

President Siad Barre himself has been in Cairo this week to affirm his country's support, as a member of the Arab League, for
President Sadat's visitation to Israel.  Somalia doubtless feels that its chances of acquiring some of Egypt's stockpile of Soviet
weaponry will rise as the prospects of another war between Egypt and Israel wane.

The Economist