Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed on Monday accused opposition groups of being proxy for al Qaida, calling on them to lay down their weapons and come to the negotiation table. 'The opposition groups such as Al-Shabaab have heeded to the call by al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, for them to fight the Somali government. That shows us the al Qaida is in Somalia,' President Ahmed said in a news conference in Mogadishu. The al Qaida leader called early this year on the Islamist fighters of Al- shabaab to overthrow the internationally recognized government of Somalia, calling its moderate Islamist leader Ahmed 'a puppet of foreign countries'. The president stated that the Somali government would defend ' the sovereignty and national integrity' of Somalia, accusing the al Qaida network is determined to take over the war-torn country. President Ahmed also accused the local Al-Shabaab group of being under the command of al Qaida and wanting to turn Somalia into a safe haven for what he termed 'international terrorism'. He called on armed opposition groups to put down their weapons and reiterated his call for a dialogue to solve the conflict in the East African nation. Al-Shabaab, along with the other insurgent group of Hezbul Islam, has been fighting Somali government forces and the African Union peacekeepers for the past two years. Thousands have either been killed or wounded since the start of the violence back in 2007 while more than 1 million civilians have been forced from their homes in the restive Somali capital. The groups, who now control much of southern and central Somalia, want to establish an Islamic state which implements a stricter form of Islamic Sharia law. 