Washington, DC — The US Navy has stepped up patrols on the Indian Ocean coast in search of suspects wanted in connection with the 1998 embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, its military officers have confirmed.

At the same time, a senior US counter-terrorism official in Washington has declined to comment on whether American troops are conducting joint operations with Kenyan forces on the land border with Somalia.

"That gets into some operational stuff," the official told The Washington Post in remarks published on Wednesday. "Clearly, we've got an embassy there, and very robust and very good relations with the Kenyans," he said.

Somalia's transitional federal government, now in control of Mogadishu, may have requested US troop deployments in the border region. Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said he spoke on Sunday with Mr Michael Ranneberger, the US ambassador to Kenya, regarding efforts to prevent the embassy bombing suspects from escaping.

The US counter-terrorism task force based in Djibouti acknowledges that American troops are on the ground in northern Kenya and in Lamu. "The soldiers are engaged in flood-relief and civic-service projects in those areas,' according to the task force.

The US State Department has said three men believed to have been involved in the embassy attacks are being sheltered by elements of the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia. With the rout of the courts' militias, the United States sees an enhanced opportunity to apprehend the three.

US Navy ships dispatched from Djibouti and from the Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, are conducting stepped-up patrols on Somalia's coast.

The unnamed US counter-terrorism official interviewed by The Washington Post signalled a shift in the Bush administration's assessment of the Islamic Courts Union.

Broad spectrum

"We think of the Courts as a broad spectrum of political actors in varying degrees of fundamentalism," the official told the Post. "Those leaders who have allied themselves by choice with al Qaeda are of concern to us. But we are not looking at the Courts as some grand enemy or threat. There are lots of variations," he said.

Those comments stand in contrast to earlier assertions by Ms Jendayi Frazer, the State Department's top Africa official.

Ms Frazer said the Courts' ruling council was under the control of an East Africa al Qaeda cell. Now the Bush administration is suggesting elements of the Courts could be integrated into Somalia's emerging new order.