Somalia’s new opposition leader said Friday his supporters could take up arms against U.N. peacekeepers if they deploy the lawless country and side with the country’s weak government.

Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, who took over leadership of Somalia’s exiled opposition movement this week, is suspected by the U.S. of collaborating with al-Qaida. He denies any terror links.

“Fighting U.N. peacekeepers depends on how they behave in Somalia,” Aweys told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Eritrea, where the opposition leadership is based.

He said his fighters will battle any U.N. force that supports the government or the Ethiopian troops who are there propping up the fragile administration.

The U.N. Security Council has said it would consider deploying U.N. peacekeepers to replace African Union troops, if there is improved political reconciliation and security. The AU force is struggling, however. It is authorized to have 8,000 soldiers but currently has about 2,600 from Uganda and Burundi.

Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991, when clan warlords ousted longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other, creating chaos in the Horn of Africa nation.

A radical Islamic group known as the Council of Islamic Courts _ led by Aweys _ brought a semblance of stability in 2006, but terrified residents with threats of public executions and floggings of criminals. His group ruled the capital and much of southern Somalia for six months before powerful troops from neighboring Ethiopia arrived to push them out.

The group then launched an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians and shattered a country that already was one of the most violent and impoverished in the world. The opposition leaders went into exile in Eritrea, under the leadership of a moderate cleric, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed.

On Tuesday night, Aweys forced Ahmed out, denouncing his recent peace talks with the government.

Ahmed and the government had agreed to end months of violence and agreed in principle to the eventual withdrawal of Ethiopian troops supporting Somalia’s fragile government. But the deal has had no effect on the ground.

Aweys, meanwhile, has refused to talk to the government until Ethiopia withdraws its troops from the country.

“We don’t want foreigners, definitely,” Aweys said. “We know their harm.”

Ethiopia and the Somali government refused to comment specifically on Aweys’ re-emergence to power or his warnings.

“For the sake of the ongoing peace talks we don’t need to comment on everything said by someone,” Somalia government spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdon said.

In the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Wahide Belay said Ethiopia would continue to support the peace process in Somalia.

“Those groups who are supported by the Eritrean regime are not showing an interest to be part of this agreement,” he said. He added: “Any force that wants to oppose or create a problem, that is not going to be helpful for the Somalis.”

Violence in the Horn of Africa _ and in Somalia in particular _ has long been a deep concern of the United States, which fears the region could become a haven for al-Qaida.

Corrupt governments, porous borders, widespread poverty and discontented Muslim populations have created a region ripe for Islamic fundamentalism. Roughly half the area of the United States, the Horn of Africa is home to about 165 million people in in Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya and Djibouti.

Kenya, and Tanzania just to its south, have already been victims of al-Qaida terrorism, with the bombings at the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 and attacks on a hotel and an Israeli airliner in Kenya in 2002.

The attacks emanated from neighboring Somalia.

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AP Writers Malkhadir M. Muhumed in Nairobi and Anita Powell in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, contributed to this report.