SOMALIA - Jan 17 - Islamist Fighters In Somalia Arrested While Trying To Escape Into Kenya.

Several Somali Islamist fighters and possibly some top leaders are arrested trying to escape into Kenya, the Kenyan authorities report, raising the possibility of a sticky asylum issue. "We have detained a number of people but we are still trying to determine their identities", said Alfred Mutua, spokesman for the Kenyan government. Somali officials said that Kenyan soldiers may have captured Shaikh Sharif Shaikh Ahmad, the second in command of the defeated Islamist forces. According to Ismail Qasim Naji, a Somali general, Sharif's briefcase was recently discovered at a jungle hideout in southern Somalia. "It had some important documents in it", Naji said at a press conference in Mogadishu, Somalia's seaside capital. When asked what documents, the general replied, "top secret". Ethiopian-led forces routed Somalia's Islamist army last month after the Islamists attacked the seat of Somalia's transitional government. The American military last week used warplanes against two areas in southern Somalia where the Islamist leaders and several terrorist suspects were believed to be hiding. A small contingent of American special operations soldiers has been deployed in Somalia to help track down suspects and identify bodies. Since then, the Islamists have been cornered between the advancing Ethiopian-led army, the heavily fortified Kenyan border and the Indian Ocean, which is being patrolled by American warships. UN officials said that the Kenyan government is deciding whether to grant Islamist leaders political asylum, in the interests of bringing Somalia's conflict to a close. Officials of Somalia's transitional government have agreed to give amnesty to rank-and-file fighters but said that they want the top Islamists handed over to them. "Any members of the upper echelons of the Islamists who still pose a threat to our security will face due process of the law in Somalia", said Abdirizak Adam Hassan, chief of staff for the transitional president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmad. "As for terrorists, we will give them to the Americans or the UN" In Baidoa, the inland city where the transitional Parliament still meets, lawmakers ousted the speaker of the Parliament, Sharif Hassan Shaikh Adan. Adan, an illiterate livestock trader, was recently one of the most powerful men in Somalia. But he fell out of favor with Yusuf and PM Ali Muhammad Gedi after he tried to strike a peace deal between the Islamists and the transitional government. He also demanded that Ethiopian troops leave Somalia. Members of Parliament accused him of being a traitor and voted 183 to 9 to remove him. A replacement has yet to be named. Adan rejected the vote, telling a Somali radio station, "The country is illegally occupied by Ethiopia and the MPs were probably forced to vote against me".