(AP – ADDIS ABABA) — Ethiopia Woyanne briefly detained what it said were four U.S. soldiers trying to contact a rebel group that has been fighting for greater autonomy for eastern Ethiopia, Ethiopian Woyanne officials said Friday.

Bereket Simon, a senior [propaganda] adviser to Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi, declined to say when the soldiers were detained or give any further details. Asked about the U.S. soldiers, he told the AP: “Four soldiers, or some soldiers, were detained. They were trying to contact the ONLF (the Ogaden National Liberation Front). That was not permitted.”

An official at the U.S. Embassy couldn’t immediately comment on the issue.

In an interview published in this week’s edition of Time magazine, Meles said Ethiopia had no proof the U.S. soldiers made contact with the rebels but they could have been “moving in that direction.”

“As far as we know, these personalities did not have official sanction to do that what they were doing. They were violating their own code of conduct,” the premier told Time in an interview conducted last month.

An official familiar with the case said the soldiers were detained in May in the eastern region of Somali State, as the Ogaden is known. The official said they were immediately released and their Ethiopian-American interpreter released in August.

At the time, the U.S. soldiers’ detention wasn’t made public.