On Tuesday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Washington was not destablising Somalia by supporting local warlords, but insisted it needed to fight the presence of al-Qaeda in the east African country.
"We certainly want to work with people in Somalia who are interested in combating terrorism," McCormack said.
"The presence of foreign terrorists in Somalia is a destabilizing fact in and of itself."
Meanwhile Kenya on Tuesday banned Somali warlords and their associates involved in the fighting from entering its territory, shutting off a key neighboring refuge and transit point, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The Horn of Africa nation was plunged into anarchy with the 1991 ousting of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre and analysts have long warned it could become a hotbed for radical Islam along the lines of Afghanistan.
The courts have repeatedly denied any links to extremists or al-Qaeda but have denounced the alliance and its US patrons that they term the "enemy of Islam."
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