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Subject: U.N. Asks U.S. for Help in Somali Relief Effort<By Trevor Rowe=Special to The
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 92 04:28:31 EST
Message-ID: <30.1992Oct30.042831@AmeriCast.com>

U.N. Asks U.S. for Help in Somali Relief Effort<By Trevor
Rowe=Special to The Washington Post=

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 29 - The United Nations has asked the United
States to provide air and sea transport to ferry equipment and
peace-keeping troops to war- and famine-torn Somalia in an effort
to speed lagging humanitarian relief efforts there.

Officials here say the plan is to move equipment into the country
ahead of peace-keeping forces from Canada, Belgium, Egypt and Ni-
geria, thus shortening the time required for an eventual deploy-
ment of the troops. The United Nations will not dispatch an addi-
tional 3,000 peace-keepers to Somalia until all of the country's
warlords and clans give their approval to the deployment.

A senior U.N. official said today that "we expect that in a few
weeks we'll see a considerable shift" in the refusal of warlords
to give the go-ahead to the deployment. His remarks were aimed at
Gen. Mohamed Farah Aideed, one of Somalia's most powerful war-
lords.  "Aideed is the problem, but his position is weakening.
He's losing ground to other warlords," the official said. "The
leaders in the other regions are going along" with the deploy-
ment.

At present, warlords in only two of five zones in Somalia have
agreed to the U.N. deployment. In Mogadishu, 500 Pakistani troops
are said to have now begun patrols, weeks after their arrival in
the capital, officials here said. In Somalia's northeast, a Cana-
dian battalion is expected to take up positions by the first week
of December.  "The question is do we wait for an agreement as
every day 1,000 Somalis die, or do we go ahead and start moving
equipment forward while working on an agreement?" a Western offi-
cial asked.

The new U.N. plan comes amid growing concern that unless interna-
tional relief efforts intensify, an estimated 250,000 Somalis
could die by the end of the year and an additional 4.5 million
could face starvation. Concern intensified this week when Mohamed
Sahnoun, the top U.N. official in charge of relief efforts in
Somalia, resigned after he criticized the U.N. effort and then
was reprimanded by Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

So far the United States has not responded to the U.N. request
that it provide military aircraft and pay for chartering ships to
carry heavy equipment such as armored personnel carriers to
Somalia.

The Security Council has authorized the dispatch of a total of
3,500 peace-keepers to Somalia. Even with agreement of the war-
lords, U.N. officials predict conditions there will be dangerous
and that all five battalions of peace-keepers will be heavily
armed.02:23 10-30C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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