MOGADISHU, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Somalia's Islamists warned on Thursday an African Union plan to send peacekeepers into Somalia risked igniting a regional war which could force them to invade arch-enemy Ethiopia.

Meeting at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, the African Union on Wednesday endorsed a plan to send peacekeepers into Somalia but said first it would need help from the European Union and others to raise the estimated $335 million cost.

"If the AU deploys the troops by force then we will also use force to remove them," said Islamist spokesman Abdirahim Ali Mudey. "We will consider any country that contributes its troops as an enemy of Somalia, I will personally leave my office, take my gun and join other Somali patriots to fight."

The Islamists took over Mogadishu and a swathe of southern Somalia earlier this year and are engaged in a political standoff with the Western- and Ethiopian-backed interim government based in the provincial town of Baidoa.

"Ethiopians are using the advantage of hosting the AU to push for their agenda to capture Somalia," Mudey told Reuters.

"Once fighting starts we will not stop the war, we will continue until we capture Addis Ababa."

The Islamists say Somalis should be left to sort out their own problems, without foreign intervention. And al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden recently weighed into the controversy by saying the arrival of foreign troops in Somalia would justify jihad.

MILITIA ENTER KISMAYO

Somalia's government is militarily weak -- although witnesses say Ethiopian troops have entered the country to bolster its position -- and backs the idea of peacekeepers.

Recalling a disastrous U.S.-led international peacekeeping effort in the early 1990s, depicted in the Hollywood film "Black Hawk Down", Mudey said the AU should spend money instead on funding peace efforts.

"If the AU cares about Somalia it should not deploy the troops, they should remember what happened in the early 1990s when the powerful U.N. mission failed to even pacify Mogadishu, let alone Somalia," he said.

Somalia has been without central rule since warlords ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

In another controversy, dozens of pro-Islamist militia loyal to an independent authority controlling the key southern port of Kismayo entered the city on Thursday in battle-wagons.

A government envoy had alleged on Wednesday that the Islamists were trying to take over Kismayo.

But the Juba Valley Alliance's chief militiaman Abdullahi Sheikh Ismail, locally known as Fartag, told Reuters the fighters who arrived were part of the local authority.

"These militias are part of us," he said referring to the dozens of heavily armed pro-Islamists fighters who quietly entered Kimayo. However, he added: "We have put our our militia on a high alert."

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