NEWS ANALYSIS : U.N. May Adopt Unusual Role of Enforcing Peace

WASHINGTON —  The surprise American offer to send up to 30,000 troops to Somalia reflects the way that ravaged, starving African country has become a metaphor in recent months for all that seems to be wrong with the United Nations.

The U.N. operation has been crippled by hesitancy, inefficiency, personnel problems and, most of all, by old rules that make no sense in a country that no longer has any semblance of government.

The dispatch of American troops would signal a dramatic enlargement and overhaul of the operation--perhaps putting the United Nations in the unusual role of enforcing the peace rather than just trying to keep it.

The offer of the troops, reportedly made by acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger to U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in a meeting in New York on Wednesday, was not announced officially; American and U.N. officials evidently feared that to do so would provoke Somali warlords into harming relief workers and the 500 Pakistani peacekeeping troops now in Somalia.

There is no certainty that the United Nations will accept the American troop offer, although the United States, the most prominent Security Council member, is sure to lobby hard for its acceptance.

In the past, the Security Council has steadfastly observed the hoary rule that the United Nations will not send peacekeepers to an area without the consent of the belligerents. That edict, however, has proven frustrating and infuriating in Somalia as the warlords agree, then renege on promises to let the peacekeepers protect the food convoys. Only a small percentage of the food is reaching the starving; most has been looted by armed gangs of the warlords.

“What is going wrong in Somalia is that it is a very particular case where you have no government,” Boutros-Ghali told The Times in an interview this week. “In all other cases, you are dealing with one or two protagonists of a dispute. Then you can make an agreement. But in Somalia, there is no government. There is a kind of confusion of government. Rather than one government, you have 10 factions. And this is something new in the peace process.”

Boutros-Ghali is known as an advocate of using U.N. troops to enforce peace when there is no way to get warring parties to agree to a cease-fire monitored by U.N. peacekeepers. But asked if Somalia is a clear case for peace enforcement, he was cautious in his reply.

“I don’t want to give you an answer because this has to be decided by the member states,” Boutros-Ghali said. “But you certainly will have a great preoccupation among member states, because if you accept peace enforcement (in Somalia), this may be a precedent for intervention in the internal affairs of other member states in the future.”

The U.N. machinery does not move swiftly. And this preoccupation with intervening in internal affairs could slow it more. Diplomats believe it will take a few days before Boutros-Ghali comes up with a new plan for the Somali operation and a few days more before the Security Council adopts a resolution to put it into action.

A difficult question also could be the command of any U.N. force. Although 122 American military personnel are assigned to peacekeeping operations throughout the world, and, thus, take orders from the world body, the United States has never allowed large numbers of American troops to serve under U.N. command.

In the Korean War, the Persian Gulf War and the postwar Kurdish relief operation in northern Iraq, American troops, though operating with U.N. authorization, served under U.S. command.

As former Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar put it at the end of the Gulf War, “This was not a U.N. war. Gen. (H. Norman) Schwarzkopf did not wear a blue helmet.” Blue helmets and blue berets are the standard headgear of U.N. peacekeepers.

The size of the proposed U.S. force raises another question. Speaking with a few journalists, American officials, relief workers and scholars in Washington a few weeks ago, Mohammed Sahnoun, the former U.N. official in charge of the Somali operation, said he believed that 3,000 peacekeeping troops would be enough to keep relief supplies moving in Somalia.

“But they must be willing to fight their way through,” he said. “They cannot have a passive role.”

Some relief workers in East Africa were troubled by reports of a massive U.S. military intervention and feared that all foreigners would become targets immediately if the warlords believed that the troops were coming.

The U.N. operation has been replete with crises and interminable frustrations. Sahnoun insists that the United Nations should have stepped in soon after the tyrannical ruler Mohamed Siad Barre was driven from power in January, 1991, leaving the capital Mogadishu and much of the country in the hands of antagonistic clan and sub-clan leaders.

“Somalia had no functioning government then,” said Sahnoun. “The U.N. cannot simply wait for people to invite them in. There has to be a new way of thinking in the U.N.”

But the Somalia crisis was little reported in the world press and the Security Council felt no pressure to deal with it. This led to a spat between Boutros-Ghali and some members of the council earlier this year.

The secretary general reportedly accused the council of caring far more about the deaths of white Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina than about the deaths of black Muslims in Somalia. This angered some ambassadors who felt that his staff had been lax in focusing on the problem and bringing it to the council’s attention. Much of the blame was put on Undersecretary General James Jonah, a Sierra Leonean who deals with African affairs.

Boutros-Ghali named Sahnoun, a highly regarded Algerian diplomat and former assistant secretary general of the Organization of African Unity, to take charge of the Somali operations. Many diplomats and U.S. officials have praised Sahnoun for negotiating patiently with the warlords and obtaining their permission to let the relief convoys through and 500 Pakistani peacekeepers enter the country.

But Sahnoun was often frustrated by the warlords going back on their pledges and by the strictures of the Security Council about using the peacekeepers only in a manner and area approved by the belligerents.

Besides this, the peacekeepers’ deployment was delayed for logistic reasons. The Pakistani troops arrived in Mogadishu before their equipment did. This inefficiency and the stubbornness of the warlords has meant that the troops still are not fully deployed throughout the city.

Then, a personnel crisis erupted in October when Boutros-Ghali reprimanded Sahnoun for criticizing the U.N. operation on American television. Sahnoun, citing Undersecretary General Jonah, accused the United Nations of failing to pay attention to the impending disaster in 1991.

Sahnoun wrote a letter of resignation to Boutros-Ghali. But this letter, Sahnoun said, also proposed that he remain in Mogadishu to handle two special duties: deployment of the peacekeepers and preparation for a national reconciliation of all factions in the future.

To the dismay of many U.N. diplomats who respected Sahnoun’s work, Boutros-Ghali accepted his resignation but did not allow the Algerian to remain in Mogadishu for any special work.

A new director, Ismat Kittani, an Iraqi, was appointed by Boutros-Ghali. Although Kittani also is widely respected at U.N. headquarters, many diplomats were troubled that he would have to start negotiations with the warlords all over again.

The situation has deteriorated since, culminating this week in the shelling of a ship entering Mogadishu with wheat and in the wounding of a Pakistani peacekeeper. But most analysts were not blaming Kittani for the breakdown. Instead, they insisted that the U.N. rules of negotiating permission from a host of warlords in an anarchic situation has to be changed.