Somalia is fast becoming a sideshow to a year-old border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea with both states accused of fomenting a proxy conflict in Somalia by arming rival factions.

Ten Somali faction leaders, all considered opponents of south Mogadishu faction leader and long-time Eritrean ally Hussein Aideed, are meeting in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa this week.

``Eritrea has been airlifting considerable arms including heavy weaponry and some 700 troops into Somalia,'' said a statement from the leader of the autonomous northern region of Puntland on Tuesday.

``Some of the Eritrean troops are now acting as personal security guards to Aideed,'' Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed said in a statement backed by other faction leaders.

The statement criticised Eritrea for violating a regional arms embargo on Somalia through the southern ports of Bali Dogle and Merca.

``We have information that there will be at least two more ships delivering arms into Merca in the next few days,'' it said.

Witnesses in Merca said earlier this month Eritrea had sent a shipload of weapons and Ethiopian rebel troops to Aideed.

Witnesses in the port city of Kismayo said Ethiopian planes had brought military supplies to forces opposed to Aideed.

Tilahun made the disclosure Thursday at a gathering honouring long-time clients on the occasion of the 57th anniversary of the bank's operation, the Ethiopian Hearld reported Sunday.

Seven of the bank's clients were honoured at the gathering with 'Life-Time' awards for maintaining accounts with the bank for between 40 and 55 years.

Tilahun said his bank had kept pace with modern banking services, which had enabled it to earn in 9 months over 500 million birr (7.5 birr = 1 USD).

"Such a considerable profit by the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia shows its steady growth over the years and the latest banking service it had introduced in recent years," Tilahun stated. He said as the oldest and biggest commercial bank in the country, the institution currently controls 90 percent of the domestic market.

Tilahun said the bank's clients presently number over 1.3 million, with over 40 percent of them outside Addis Ababa.

The bank has 168 branch offices, including one foreign branch in the capital of neighbouring Djibouti.

Two of the bank's clients who were awarded the 'Life-Time' prize for having remained faithful clients for 55 years and 50 years respectively, said their associations with the bank all these years "had helped transform their lives."

Seven private banks have been established in Ethiopia since the 1993 government bill curtailing the monopoly of the state in the banking sector that the military/marxist regime introduced in 1975.

These are the Awash, the Dashen, Abyssinia, Wogagen, Unity and NIB Banks Share Company Limited.

Zenawi came to Cairo two days after Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki met Mubarak for talks aimed at ending the war.

Ethiopian jets bombed Eritrea's Red Sea port of Massawa and targets in two other areas of their disputed border at the weekend. Ethiopia said it had inflicted heavy damage.

Afewerki said on Monday in Asmara that Ethiopia had launched the raids to undercut international peace efforts.

Tens of thousands of soldiers are believed to have died in the year-long ground and air war between the two Horn of Africa states.

Diplomatic initiatives have aimed to end the war based on a peace plan drawn up by the Organisation of African Unity.

Both sides say they accept the plan, which calls for demilitarisation of the border followed by demarcation of the frontier, but they disagree on its details.

Ethiopia says Eritrea must withdraw from contested areas it occupied in the first round of the war but Eritrea says it is only obliged to pull out of the Badme region, which it has done. Eritrea became an independent state in 1993, when it separated from Ethiopia with Ethiopian agreement.