A militia from the Islamic Courts Union smokes a cigarette as he talks to a young girl in Balad, June 17, 2006 some 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Somali capital, Mogadishu. US President George W. Bush has expressed concern that Somalia could become a safe haven for al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. [AP Photo]

The UN will make its first formal contact with the Islamic militants that captured most of Somalia with the arrival this week of a security team to meet with the leaders of the little-known group, a senior official said Monday.

The trip is meant to prepare for a similar visit by UN humanitarian agencies that want to ramp up aid to the country, said Francois Lonseny Fall, the UN special representative for Somalia.

It also reflects a growing realization within the UN that the Islamic militants, known as the Islamic Courts Union, are the closest thing Somalia now has to a government after some 15 years as a failed state when different warlords rose and fell, officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the subject.

"It's 'turning the page' time," one UN official said. "There's something functioning like a government there for the first time in a very long time."

The team will meet the group's representatives in Jowhar, a city 60 miles northeast of the capital Mogadishu. The militants captured Jowhar from secular warlords on Wednesday.

Several United Nations agencies had a compound in Jowhar that had to be evacuated as the fighting intensified.

Fall said the meeting will help the United Nations better understand the Islamic Courts Union, which is little-known and poorly understood outside Somalia. The United States fears the union is harboring terrorists, but the group has said it wants to play a constructive role with the international community.

"We don't know exactly what is their intention and that's why the first mission is going now to Jowhar to meet them," Fall said.

Somalia has been without an effective central government since the fall of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. A transitional government was established in 2004 but wields little power.

It is based in the only town it controls, Baidoa, 155 miles northwest of Mogadishu.

Fall spoke after he briefed the UN Security Council on Somalia. Diplomats said that members of the council stressed the need for Somalia's transitional government to open a dialogue with the Islamic militants.

The mission is separate from another one earlier Monday by the African Union. The AU said experts will travel to Somalia to study conditions before deploying a possible peacekeeping mission there.

UN officials said the humanitarian agencies joining the second trip would likely include the UN Development Program, the World Food Program, the UN Children's Fund, known as UNICEF, and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, among others.

The World Food Program says 23 percent of Somalis suffer from malnutrition, well above the 15 percent rate that means a country is in a major emergency.

There were signs Monday of increasing tension between the transitional government and the Islamic militias. The government has called for peacekeepers; the militias fiercely oppose outside intervention.

Somalia's transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf said he would only open talks with Islamic Courts after they withdraw militias to Mogadishu, lay down their arms, recognize his administration and accept the transitional constitution.

The Islamic group leader, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, rejected the conditions, saying his group would not talk with the government if it continues to press for peacekeepers.