Word: ghali
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...Somalia, U.S. officials fear their troops could be cast into the same untenable position. U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has been leading a campaign to turn the humanitarian mission into a more problematic operation to rebuild the Somali nation. Step 1 is disarming a populace so heavily armed that no one can even begin to figure the size of the arsenal. But the Bush Administration remains unwilling to take on a task that could put U.S. troops in the middle, making the Marines the target of anyone who refuses to give...
Foreign policy has leapfrogged to the top. In Somalia, the Marines are moving more slowly than expected to extend their security zone. Relief workers in the hinterlands are clamoring for rescue from attacks by armed gangs. At the U.N., Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali made new demands on the U.S., insisting that American troops remain in Somalia until they have disarmed the warring clans and restored some central authority. And in Brussels, the NATO allies are looking once again at the possibility of using armed force against Serbian aggressors in the remnants of Yugoslavia...
That position does not coincide with Boutros-Ghali's. He has said all along that the U.S. will have to disarm the warring clans in order to create a "secure environment." The U.S. ducked that tricky question in writing its vague rules of engagement, which leave it up to local commanders to decide how much disarming to do. Now the Secretary-General is demanding that before going home American troops not only seize the Somali clans' arsenals but also remove the mines that have been laid in the north of the country and set up a military police force...
Only then, Boutros-Ghali says, will the U.N. provide peacekeepers to take over. Policymakers in Washington maintain that this is not what they agreed to and not what the relevant Security Council resolution provides. When Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger first made the offer of troops to the U.N. the day before Thanksgiving, says a senior U.S. official, the terms were unambiguous: "a narrow, limited mandate for our forces." Now, says the official, "Boutros-Ghali is moving the goalposts...
This will make things very difficult for Clinton. No follow-on U.N. peacekeeping force can be put into Somalia without Boutros-Ghali's cooperation, and an American pullout without such a U.N. presence would be a disaster. "We may be looking at a very long commitment, measured in years, not months," says a Clinton aide...