MOGADISHU – Somalia’s government is negotiating with Islamist insurgents and has persuaded some of them to join its administration, the foreign minister said on Saturday.

Somalia’s U.N.-backed administration is facing a stubborn insurgency by Islamist rebels, including foreign militants who Western security agencies say use the Horn of Africa nation as a safe haven to plot attacks in the region and beyond.

“Some al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam (members) have joined our government,” Foreign Minister Ali Jama Jangili told reporters in Mogadishu. “We are negotiating with these two groups.”

It was not clear how many Islamists were joining the government, and in what roles.

Washington accuses al Shabaab of being al Qaeda’s proxy in Somalia. President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s government controls only small parts of the central region and a few districts of the bullet-scarred capital.

More than 18,000 Somalis have been killed since the start of 2007 and another 1.4 million driven from their homes.

That has triggered one of the world’s worst aid crises, with the number of people needing assistance leaping 17.5 percent in a year to 3.76 million, or half the population.

“We are planning to handle the country’s security in the near future, this is our priority and we have support from the international community,” Jangili said.