From: jnr@igc.apc.org (Jim Rosenfield)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Subject: Re: News Stories on Hunger - 12/13/92
Date: 14 Dec 92 06:18:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1471700306:cdp:1471700307:000:308174
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!jnr    Dec 13 22:18:00 1992


/* Written 10:14 pm  Dec 13, 1992 by jnr in igc:hunger.general */
RTf  12/10 0538  China plans Western-style central banking system

BEIJING, Dec 10, Reuter - China plans to give its central bank
Western-style monetary levers, such as discount rates and reserve
requirements, to help break the boom-bust economic cycles that have
plagued the country in the past, senior bank officials said. 

"The central bank will control the economy indirectly," Zhou Zhengqing,
vice-president of the People's Bank of China (PBOC), China's central
bank, was quoted as saying in Thursday's China Daily. 

A draft national banking law to be introduced next year would "eliminate
central planning" and allow banks independence to set interest rates and
make loan decisions, the official newspaper said. It gave few specifics.

The ultimate goal was to cut excessive new lending and allow banks to
play an appropriate role in the market economy, it said, adding: "Under
the (current) lopsided economic system, economic levers sometimes cannot
achieve expected results. 

"If the central bank continues to be controlled by the government, which
takes in money with one hand and spends it with the other, inflation
will still be probable." 

China is in the midst of an economic boom sparked by senior leader Deng
Xiaoping's call for faster economic reforms. 

Many economists worry that a new cycle of devastating inflation will
follow if the government does not act to control wasteful investment. 

Zhou and other bank officials said China's current banking system was
failing to meet the needs of the "socialist market economy" Deng has
promoted as the economic future. 

Economic reforms have stripped many of its central planning functions
from the PBOC. 

But until now, it has not had the more subtle tools of economic
management its counterparts have in the West to keep the economy in
balance. 

China's five main "specialised" banks -- the Bank of China, the
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Agricultural Bank of China,
the People's Construction Bank of China and the Bank of Communications
-- find it impossible to refuse requests for new loans when they come
from local governments. 

This means floods of new loans are washing into the economy to fund
development projects. China's state banks will have made as much as 400
billion yuan in new loans this year, according to official reports. 

Zhao Haikuan, director of the central bank's Research Institute of
Finance and Banking, said the new reforms would seek to address this
problem by setting up one or more new national banks to specialise in
giving government-ordered loans. 

These "policy loans," which involve long-term, low interest credit to
government-sponsored projects, were a major drain on bank resources, the
China Daily said. 

"The establishment of such banks in China is aimed at separating policy
loans from commercial loans and freeing specialising banks from lending
policy loans," Zhao was quoted as saying. Liberated from the burden of
policy loans, the specialised banks could be transformed into true
commercial banks by cutting the government's holdings, the officials
said. 

Parliament would take over from the cabinet responsibility for the
central bank, propping up the bank's role as an economic watchdog, the
China Daily said. The final goal would be to allow the central bank to
use tools such as discount rates to influence money supply, it added. 

REUTER  <<>>APn  12/12 1319  Somalia-Hunger

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By TINA SUSMAN 

Associated Press Writer 

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Abdi Gabani Osman remembers his last good
meal as if it were yesterday, even though it was 12 months ago: millet
and milk, shared with his wife and five children on the peaceful farm
where they raised camels, sheep and pigs. 

Not a king's banquet, but a feast compared to the porridge and biscuits
Osman lives on now in a Mogadishu refugee camp. The best part, says
Osman, was he didn't have to stand in line like a schoolchild to get
food. 

Watching the armored personnel carriers rumbling along the streets and
the low-flying Marine choppers, hundreds of thousands of Somalis like
Osman wait for the day Operation Restore Hope gives them back their
self-sufficiency. 

On his farm in the town of Walawein, southwest of Mogadishu, Osman
recalled not having to depend on others. Now he must rely on foreign
charity. 

Relief agencies say ending this cycle of dependence is a key to making
their efforts successful. One proposed mission is to supply refugees,
mainly farmers, with clothes, shelter, grain and tools so they can
return to their homes and care for themselves. 

United Nations spokesman Ian MacLeod said the relief workers hope to get
"many hundreds of thousands of people" to return to their homes before
the spring rainy season in March and April. This would give them time to
plant crops for the July harvest, a major step toward ending their need
for donated food. 

The U.S. troops who swooped across the city on Wednesday have made clear
they won't be moving into places like Osman's hometown for some time,
until they are sure the clan miltias that drove out the Somalis won't
attack them. 

It's a situation that frustrates relief workers who have lost most of
their food to looters and are relying upon the Marines to stop the
thievery. 

It's more frustrating for the millions of Somalis who once lived
independent lives. For them, the worst part of Somalia's war and famine
is not necessarily the loss of their homes, but the loss of pride that
went with it. 

Osman says he was not a rich man, but he considered himself prosperous
enough before the war. With his five sons, he grew millet and raised
animals. His wife, Halimo Aden, prepared meals in their thatched hut,
and sometimes they slaughtered one of their animals to eat. 

But Osman, 45, said the family was constantly plagued by thievery by
armed mobs. So like millions of other Somalis, they abandoned the farm
and set out across the parched land in search of a safe haven. 

They found it at a refugee camp and feeding center run by the Irish
relief agency GOAL and the International Committee of the Red Cross in
south Mogadishu.

Each day, the center feeds 2,300 people a meal of Unimix -- a
combination of beans, oil, flour, sugar, and cereal -- and protein
biscuits. 

Osman said his own food from his farm was far better. But for now, he
said, there was no choice but to eat what was offered. 

<<>>RTw  12/12 1241  GANG RAMPAGE IN SOUTHERN SOMALI PORT - UN WORKERS

By John Pine 

MOGADISHU, Dec 12, Reuter - Clan gangs are tearing into Somalia's
southern port of Kismayu in gun-mounted "technical" pickup trucks to
loot and settle scores before U.S.-led forces roll in, U.N. relief
workers said on Friday. 

They said that between 60 and 90 people were killed in a clan blood feud
in Kismayu on Tuesday night, the eve of what relief workers hoped would
be a Marines' sweep into the town. 

"They saw it as their last chance to finish off things they had to do
before the troops came in," Sean Devereux, who heads UNICEF's Kismayu
operation, said in Mogadishu. 

"People expected the troops to come in but what has happened now is the
technicals have gone on a rampage and are doing targetted killings,"
Devereux said. 

Devereux and health project officer Johan Svensson called in a plane to
take them out on Thursday, leaving their operation which feeds 2,000
people a day in the care of the 50 local workers. 

Most international aid workers had already fled Kismayu before U.S.
marines landed in the Somali capital on Wednesday. 

Devereux and Svensson were unable to leave with them because they owed
150 million shillings ($30,000) to bodyguards and technicals they had
hired for defence against marauding gunmen. 

"If we had tried to leave without paying them, our own drivers would
have blocked us," said Devereux, and Englishman. 

Looters foiled three attempts to fly money and supplies in from Nairobi,
looting planes on the runway at Kismayu airport. 

In desperation Devereux turned to local warlord Colonel Omar Jess, who
drove to the airport in his own pickup, bristling with guns, to meet a
fourth flight and deliver the UNICEF funds. "He didn't trust any of his
own people or technicals," Devereux said. 

He voiced dismay at the relative lack of attention paid to Kismayu, a
key supply point for the lower Juba valley. "It's got a great port and a
terrific airport. If they want to get food up there they have got to get
to Kismayu." 

The multinational United Nations force that will grow to about 38,000
has set hunger-stricken Baidoa, 200 km (125 miles) northwest of
Mogadishu, as its next objective. Baidoa has been nicknamed "Death
City." 

Aid workers who see armed bandits thwarting their battle against famine
which has killed 300,000 Somalis, are frustrated at the deliberate pace
of the military deployment. 

"The delay just makes it worse," Svensson said. 

REUTER JP AET  <<>>RTw  12/12 0835  PENTAGON SAYS NO AID WORKERS HELD HOSTAGE IN SOMALIA

WASHINGTON, Reuter - The U.S. Defence Department said on Saturday that
there were apparently no aid relief workers held hostage in southern
Somalia as previously reported. 

"We've determined the earlier reports of relief workers being held
hostage in Kismayu are unsubstantiated," a Pentagon spokesman said,
revising an earlier Defence Department account of hostages taken
captive. 

A vanguard of U.S. troops is clearing the way for an international force
of some 38,000 soldiers, mostly American, to protect aid deliveries to
the famine-hit country. 

On Friday, Rear-Admiral Michael Cramer, director of U.S. joint military
intelligence, said hostages had been taken from some humanitarian
organisations.

He said he the relief workers were not Americans and that a relief
organisation was negotiating for their release. 

On Saturday, a Pentagon spokesman said further checks failed to produce
independent confirmation of any hostages being held. 

"The only confirmed case of a relief worker being held hostage was the
Italian United Nations staffer last week in Mogadishu," he said. 

He said a 53-year-old Italian had been held for about 24 hours and
released unharmed. 

REUTER JSF  <<>>RTw  12/12 0627  U.S. TROOPS HELP U.N. MOVE FOOD FROM SOMALI PORT

By Alistair Lyon 

MOGADISHU, Dec 12, Reuter - The United Nations sent a test food convoy
across Mogadishu battlelines on Saturday, but hundreds starved to death
in more remote parts of Somalia. 

Aid workers said relief agencies could not work effectively until
U.S.-led forces spread throughout the country to protect convoys and
ensure looters do not grab food for the hungry. 

Four U.S. military trucks took 20 tonnes of French-donated rice, beans
and oil over the Green Line to north Mogadishu for the first time since
U.S. and French troops landed on Wednesday. 

"It's extremely symbolic. It's the first convoy we have been able to get
out of the port since we were joined in Somalia by the united task
force," Ian MacLeod, spokesman for the U.N. relief operation in Somalia,
told reporters. 

"Once the Americans have the security presence on the ground then there
will be significant trucking operations out of this port throughout
Somalia." 

U.S. officials said in Washington on Friday night that famine relief
workers, who they did not identify, had been taken hostage in the
lawless southern port Kismayu and "their (relief) organisation" was
negotiating their release. 

They said at a Pentagon briefing that Somali gangs have held relief
workers hostage before but released them after several days when their
money demands were met. 

"Usually they are released for money or food," Rear Admiral Michael
Cramer, director of U.S. joint military intelligence said. "Hopefully it
will all turn out as favourably as those in the past have." 

UNICEF's Mark Thomas told Reuters in Mogadishu his group was
particularly worried about conditions in Kismayu, where at least 60
people were reported killed and 40 wounded in fighting earlier this
week. 

"The situation in Kismayu will continue to deteriorate until something
is done," he said. 

A ceasefire declared on Friday by Somalia's two main warlords, Mohamed
Farah Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohamed, gave Mogadishu a fairly quiet night,
but security is far from total. 

Aideed's men fought rival clansmen at a military camp near Mogadishu on
Saturday in a feud which has killed four people and wounded five in the
last 24 hours, witnesses said. 

Gunmen robbed two Western aid workers, from UNICEF and the World Food
Programme, as they crossed back into south Mogadishu after checking
arrangements for food deliveries to the north. 

"They lost all their valuables -- watches, documents and money," Thomas
said. 

A Kenyan photographer was shot in the leg by a bandit on Friday and an
American photographer was robbed at gunpoint near the Green Line on
Saturday, colleagues said. 

MacLeod said many relief agencies had brought their staff back to
Mogadishu and resumed food distribution, but were evacuating aid workers
from other towns still under gun rule. 

He said 160 to 190 people were dying daily among the 30,000 residents
and displaced people in Bardere, 350 km (220 miles) west of Mogadishu,
and death rates were high in other towns. 

Landmines had made it impossible for relief workers to gain access to
more than a handful of the 186 villages near Bardere. 

U.S. and French forces, building up their strength in Mogadishu, are
still too thinly stretched to escort relief convoys to inland areas
where hunger and disease is most acute. 

WFP spokesman Paul Mitchell said food was available to feed two million
of Somalia's 6.5 million people until May, including 9,000 tonnes in
Mogadishu port, 83,000 tonnes in ships at sea and 113,000 tonnes
committed for the first five months of next year. 

"We have absolutely all the food we believe is necessary and most of the
money needed to move it," he added. 

MacLeod said General Robert Johnston, U.S. commander of the joint task
force, had promised to speed up its activities. 

"Johnston is acutely aware of the desperate need to get into the
interior regions of Somalia as soon as he has enough support on the
ground," he said. 

"At the moment they don't have the personnel, the logistics, the
resources on the ground to be able to provide adequate security for a
large convoy to Baidoa," MacLeod said, referring to Somalia's "Death
City" where U.S. forces may move in soon. 

REUTER JP AL DLT  <<>>WP   12/12  xx Rival Warlords Agree To Immediate Truce

By William Claiborne and Barton Gellman 

Washington Post Staff Writers 

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 11 - Somalia's two most powerful warlords,
bitter rivals since the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre early
last year, embraced and kissed today as they signed a peace agreement
aimed at ending two years of anarchy and bloodshed in one of the world's
poorest countries. 

Following a U.S.-arranged meeting at the unofficial American embassy
here, Mohamed Farah Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohamed said they agreed to
have members of their warring militias remove their weapons from
Mogadishu within 48 hours. They also agreed to cease all hostilities
immediately, eliminate demarcation lines separating their rival factions
in the capital and end negative propaganda about each other. 

Warfare among the rival members of the Hawiye clan has killed thousands
of people directly and has contributed to the deaths of an estimated
300,000 more from starvation and disease. The accord reached today was
designed as a first step toward ending the armed conflict and building
an environment in which relief supplies can be delivered to Somalia's
starving people, and may open the way for the reconstitution of
political authority in the country. 

The agreement stipulates that all militiamen and all of their
machine-gun-equipped Land Cruisers and pickup trucks will withdraw from
the city to unspecified assembly points at a time to be determined by a
Joint Committee on Reconciliation. 

However, it was not clear from a communique issued by the two warlords
after a meeting with U.S. special envoy Robert Oakley what the gunmen
would do with their weapons other than move them beyond the city limits.


Aideed and Ali Mahdi did not answer reporters' questions after the peace
meeting at a Consolidated Oil Co. guest house that has been turned into
a temporary and unofficial American embassy. 

The two leaders praised the intervention of the international community
and said they were grateful for the presence of U.S. military forces,
which staged an amphibious landing here early Wednesday. 

The warlords called on all Somalis to reconcile their differences, and
said the existing reconciliation committee would convene in the next 24
hours. 

In Washington, officials said the significance of the clan leaders'
apparent rapprochement remained unclear, Washington Post staff writer
John Lancaster reported. While each controls sizeable armies in
Mogadishu, senior government analysts said their influence is negligible
in important provincial capitals such as Baidoa and Kismaayu, where
factional violence and looting has intensified in recent days. 

Moreover, it remains to be seen whether the agreement is anything more
than a temporary marriage of convenience that will dissolve once U.S.
troops leave, officials said. U.S. intelligence reports indicate that
since the Marine landing, both leaders have been trucking military
equipment out of the capital and hiding it in the countryside, the
analysts said. 

But the analysts also credited the U.S.-led military intervention with
having a "catalytic" effect that could jump-start the long-stalled
process of political reconciliation in Somalia. "The important thing to
recognize is that this is a dynamic process," said a senior government
analyst who is following the situation closely. 

"I liken the Somalia situation to a pool table with the balls racked up
on it," the analyst said. "What you've had is the first shot of the
cueball into the balls, and the balls are now reacting to it . . . . And
of course one of the critical balls is the political reconciliation
process." 

As the rival leaders had lunch in the luxurious guest house, one of the
few such buildings in the city to escape looting because it is guarded
by a private militia, three U.S. helicopter gunships circled overhead
and three Marine light armored vehicles and five Humvees were parked
outside. 

As Ali Mahdi's U.S.-guarded convoy to the meeting crossed the "green
line" dividing the city, it transformed Mogadishu's streets into a
honking, screaming, euphoric mass of humanity. 

At the K-4 traffic circle, the intersection of roads to the airport and
harbor, an armed Marine UH-1N Huey helicopter swooped in and hovered low
to disperse foot traffic, beating up thick clouds of chalky dust. A
procession of fast armored vehicles charged through pickup trucks,
donkey carts, barefoot children and fist-pumping men. 

"Go! Go! Go! Go!" screamed Marine Capt. Bob Castellvi, sitting atop his
light armored vehicle and beating its side as though spurring on a
horse. 

At the center of the procession, smiling serenely inside a Volkswagen
Golf that flew an American flag, was Ali Mahdi. 

U.S. military and diplomatic representatives missed no opportunity to
treat Aideed and Ali Mahdi with public respect. The two warlords, whose
struggle for power and extortion of relief supplies are blamed by
outside observers for starving 300,000 of their countrymen to death,
were cloaked by their American interlocutors in the mantle of legitimate
power. 

"By no means are we coming in here and spoiling for a fight with one of
the factions," said Marine Col. Fred Peck, spokesman for the joint
military task force. "We do cooperate with the clans" and prefer "to
work out accommodations rather than confrontations." 

Peck placed the stamp of official policy, for example, on a Marine
lieutenant's decision Thursday to withdraw a squad of infantry that
stumbled upon an arms cache belonging to Osman Ato, an ally of Aideed.
The Marines had found a howitzer, a recoilless rifle, two heavy machine
guns, two antiaircraft guns and nearly 200,000 rounds of boxed 7.62mm
ammunition, all within a block of the closed U.S. Embassy. 

"That apparently is one of the storage areas for weapons belonging to
that faction," Peck said. He said it was not the U.S. purpose to disarm
the factions.

"We are not going out to police up all of Mogadishu," he said. "We are
trying to ensure the safe delivery of food." 

U.S. military operations remained modest, with the initial Marine force
stretched thinly around key strategic points and unable to spare the men
and equipment for expansion. The first Marine-escorted food convoy from
Mogadishu's port to the northern part of the city, scheduled for today,
was postponed, apparently because of concerns over security for the
drive across the "green line." 

At the same time, a team of 25 American military engineers and security
troops flew to an abandoned Soviet air base at Beli Dogle, 60 miles
south of the capital, to start preparing its 10,000-foot runway for
incoming transports, the Associated Press reported. About 1,300 Canadian
troops will begin arriving Monday at the base, which is halfway to the
famine-wracked town of Baidoa. 

Planners here focused on laying the logistical foundation for the entry
of follow-on troops. They landed seven planeloads - including the first
C-5 Galaxy - of airfield and cargo handling equipment, along with two
passenger planes full of troops to run the facilities. 

Unable to find a qualified pilot to bring the huge supply ship Jack
Lummus into Mogadishu's perilous harbor, skipper Harold Vanderploeg did
the piloting himself past the wreckage of an old freighter and over the
sandbars. A cement pier cut a deep gash above the Lummus's waterline,
but the ship began to unload its 740 vehicles and more than 400,000
cubic feet of dry cargo. 

The ruined port, an apocalyptic scene of stench and wreckage, already
has two huge, half-packed warehouses full of donated sorghum, wheat,
corn, rice and beans. Since the Marines displaced 900 of Aideed's gunmen
there, they have fought a cat-and-mouse battle against pilferage. 

Teenagers and children, hiding among the cement blocks of the sea wall,
climb huge cargo containers and try to sneak into the warehouses at
night. Thursday night, Lance Cpl. Marcus A. Keene caught a 12-year-old
with a 110-pound bag, stooping and shuffling backward as he dragged it. 

"I want to see them get food, but we have our orders," Keene said. " . .
. I'm just waiting for them to get the food in where it's needed." 

The port itself will need quite a bit of work. Heavy equipment operators
began today bulldozing old wood pallets, broken containers, drums of
foul liquid, coils of rotten rope and rusting cable, plastic sheeting
and decomposing scraps into a pile. The Navy plans to disinfect an
expanse of concrete the size of RFK Stadium's parking lot. 

Peck, at his first official briefing of the Somalia mission, warned
reporters that their lives may be endangered by freewheeling
entanglement in operations here. 

 Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>APn  12/12 0127  Somalia-Airbase

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By JEFFREY ULBRICH 

Associated Press Writer 

BELI DOGLE, Somalia (AP) -- The rusty hangars of this former Soviet
airbase are littered with the sagging skeletons of fighter jets long
since cannibalized and looted. 

But no one is touching the newly arrived C-130 transports. They belong
to the U.S. military. 

In occupying the airfield, Operation Restore Hope's advance guard has
spread its arms 60 miles inland from Mogadishu. The strip lies about
halfway betweef Mogadishu and Baidoa, center of some of Somalia's worst
starvation, looting and clan violence. 

The U.S. Air Force flew a team of about 25 engineers and security troops
into Beli Dogle on Thursday. 

At the Pentagon on Friday, Marine Lt. Gen Martin Brandtner said Beli
Dogle had been approved for landing of big transport aircraft. The first
units of the 10th Mountain Division of Fort Drum, N.Y., would arrive
over the next 48 hours, he said. 

The advance element of about 1,300 Canadian troops, who will be based at
Beli Dogle, was scheduled to arrive Monday. 

The Americans say they are going to need a large number of airstrips all
over the country as the famine relief work expands into the hinterland. 

The Soviet Union built Beli Dogle airfield after signing a security
agreement with President Mohamed Siad Barre in 1974. In 1977, Siad Barre
kicked out the Russians and the airbase was used to train Somali
commandos. 

It has fallen into disuse since Siad Barre was overthrown two years ago.


Delta-winged jet fighters flew over the base Friday and American Cobra
attack helicopters skimmed the ground, hovered and raced on in a series
of maneuvers apparently used 5/8o seek out armed infiltrators. 

Air force engineers worked under a blazing sun as soldiers kept watch
through the missing windows of the control tower. Two vehicles of
security men roamed the grounds of the base, which is overgrown with
vegetation. 

Another crew bulldozed tall bushes and trees to accommodate aircraft
with a wide wingspan. 

A C-130 transport plane sat at one end of the runway and another was
parked at the ramp. 

In the nearby village, excitement was high over the unexpected arrival
of the Americans -- excitement and some disappointment. 

A group of villagers said the Americans had arrived unannounced and
started going around take weapons away from people. 

The villagers, many of whom had worked on the base in the old days, said
they hoped to cooperate with the Americans. 

The village leader presented the commander with a list of names of
people who formerly worked as security guards at the base, the man said
through an interpreter. 

<<>>UPn  12/12 0023  Fog, snow stop aid flights but peace activists get thru

By KEVIN SULLIVAN 

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (UPI) -- A group of 550 peace activists
beat the odds and made their way into the capital of war-torn Bosnia-
Herzegovina despite heavy snow and fog that prevented the resumption of
a humanitarian airlift into Sarajevo. 

Fighting meanwhile continued Friday in several towns across the former
Yugoslav republic, but U.N. monitors reported reduced shelling in the
Sarajevo area. 

The group of peace activists arrived in Sarajevo 30 hours behind
schedule, delayed by the Serbian forces besieging the battered city. The
group was allowed to proceed only when each of the 550 activists agreed
to sign a document stating the journey was undertaken at their own risk.


The activists from Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Japan, Britain and
the United States planned to stay in Sarajevo for two days of talks with
political leaders and local human rights activists. 

Both the Italian government and U.N. peacekeeping forces, or UNPROFOR,
advised against the visit on security grounds, a U.N. official said. 

"Today in Sarajevo three peoples are suffering," said a statement issued
by the peace activists. "Three peoples are fighting. All three are
dying." 

"But tomorrow, Sarajevo may become the heart of a united Europe, where
people of different origins and different beliefs will live together in
tolerance, respect, and human harmony," the statement added. 

Meanwhile, heavy fog lay over Sarajevo, reducing visibility in the city
as temperatures hovered several degrees below freezing. Sarajevo airport
had been scheduled to reopen Friday, but was forced to remain closed for
an 11th day. 

"The airport has reopened in a sense," an UNPROFOR official said. "Only
bad weather conditions prevent the resumption of flights." 

The airport, providing vital humanitarian aid for some 500,000 residents
and refugees, was closed Dec. 1 when a U.S. cargo plane was hit by
small-arms fire, and heavy fighting near the runway kept it closed since
then. 

The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina erupted in late March when Serbian forces
-- backed politically and financially by the Communist regime of
neighboring Serbia -- launched an offensive to carve a "Serbian state"
out of the republic. 

Serbian forces control virtually all of the "state" proclaimed by their
leaders on 70 percent of the former Yugoslav republic of 1.9 million
Muslim Slavs, 1.4 million Christian Orthodox Serbs and 750,000 Roman
Catholic Croats. 

Thousands of people have been killed and wounded since the start of the
Serbian offensive, and more than 2 million people -- Muslim Slavs, Serbs
and Croats -- have been driven from their homes. 

Fighting was reported in several key areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina
overnight and Friday morning. Sarajevo Radio reported heavy damage to
civilian and industrial targets during Thursday fighting in Tuzla and
Gradacac. 

Sarajevo Radio also reported Serbian artillery fire on the central
Bosnian lines around Tesanj after 9 a.m. Friday. Maglaj and Bugojno came
under small-arms fire, the radio said. 

The radio reported artillery fire around the eastern Bosnian town of
Bihac, and the Bosnian army was reported to be advancing toward the
village of Grabez outside Bihac. 

About 1,000 artillery rounds were fired Thursday on Bosnian government
force positions around Zvornink and the road linking the town with
nearby Tuzla, in northeastern Bosnia, the radio said. 

Infantry fighting continued overnight in the Visoko area, north of
Sarajevo, the radio said. 

U.N. monitors reported reduced shelling in the Sarajevo area Thursday,
with 91 heavy rounds recorded landing on Serbian positions and 35 heavy
rounds being fired into the Bosnian-controlled parts of the capital. 

Friday, Sarajevo had no electricity or telephone communications. Only a
small number of houses in low-lying areas had water supplies. 

Spanish Maj. Juan Villalon, a spokesman for the U.N. command in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, said two teams of engineers would be sent out under
UNPROFOR escort to begin work on repairing the city's main electricity
line. 

Repair missions were impossible for more than a week because of
fighting. 

Villalon said U.N. engineers reported the electricity line, the city's
only remaining power link, was seriously damaged. Repair work would have
to start from scratch, he said. 

The combination of low temperatures, loss of power supplies and
suspension of the humanitarian airlift into Sarajevo has produced a
rapid deterioration in living conditions in the capital. 

Dr. Risto Tervahauta of the World Health Organization said present
temperatures in the city, between 23-32 degrees F, already were
critical. Sarajevo is surrounded by mountains and suffers from high
humidity. Snow and rain have fallen in recent days. 

Tervahauta said while the normal caloric intake should increase by
around 25 percent in cold temperatures, the caloric intake of Sarajevo's
citizens actually was falling. 

"The percentage (of people in danger) is very high," he said. "Many
people have lost around 10 kilos (22 pounds). They're not starving, but
they're malnourished. As temperatures go down they need more food, and
they're not resistant to cold." 

The World Health Organization was planning a shipment of blankets and
winter clothes to the city. 

Bosnia-Herzegovina President Alija Izetbegovic, on a tour of areas still
under his government's control, sent a message of congratulation to the
predominantly Muslim Slav Bosnian army in Sarajevo. 

Izetbegovic commended his government troops for their capture of Zuc
hill, a rategically important location north of Sarajevo. The hill
passed into Bosnian hands during the past week's heavy fighting around
the capital. 

Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>RTw  12/11 1817  RELIEF EFFORT TO QUICKEN AFTER SOMALI CEASEFIRE

By Alistair Lyon 

MOGADISHU, Dec 12, Reuter - Relief agencies sought to speed food
deliveries to Somalia's famine-stricken people on Saturday after U.S.
pressure prompted the country's two most powerful warlords to call a
truce. 

Foreign aid workers welcomed the ceasefire declared by blood rivals Ali
Mahdi Mohamed and Mohamed Farah Aideed on Friday, saying it could
unblock the flow of aid disrupted by two years of clan violence, looting
and anarchy. 

"Obviously this kind of political agreement is going to aid and assist
the relief effort," Paul Mitchell, spokesman for the U.N.'s World Food
Programme, told reporters in Mogadishu. 

The international agency CARE planned to send U.N. trucks carrying 50
tonnes of food under U.S. military escort into north Mogadishu across
the shattered city's "Green Line" on Saturday. 

Rapacious gunmen regularly looted such convoys before U.S. and French
troops, the forerunners of a large U.N. force, landed in the Somali
capital on Wednesday. 

The gunmen's ramshackle battlewagons have now disappeared from
Mogadishu's streets. Witnesses in the inland town of Baidoa, where
hunger and disease are killing 90 people a day, said gunmen there were
lying low amid reports that U.S. Marines were about to arrive. 

"We ask the Americans and the United Nations to disarm the Somali people
because if you do not disarm (them), peace will not come back," Ali
Mahdi said after his talks with Aideed. 

The two men linked forces to topple dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in
January 1991, but then fought each other in a feud which killed
thousands of people and created a devastating famine. 

Mitchell said a Danish-flagged ship, the Sea Pearl, was due in Mogadishu
by Sunday from Mombasa with 3,000 tonnes of wheat. 

It would be the first relief ship to unload in the port since October
24. Shelling from the shore drove off the last vessel which attempted to
deliver supplies on November 24. 

"We think this is a very significant achievement. It's been made
possible because the U.S. military provides the support we just didn't
have before," said Mitchell. 

A U.S. C-130 military transport earlier flew into Mogadishu from Mombasa
with 13 tonnes of corn milk, the first such relief flight since U.S.
Marines seized the capital's airport. 

Brigadier-General Paul Fratarangelo, 49, commander of a four-month-old
U.S. military airlift known as Operation Provide Relief, said it would
last until roads to needy regions were secure. 

"The operation will continue until we can deliver food uninterruptedly
to the areas the NGOs (private relief agencies) consider critical," he
told reporters in Mombasa. 

In Brussels, U.S. Defence Secretary Dick Cheney said he did not foresee
American troops staying in Somalia indefinitely. 

He said the 28,000 U.S. troops heading the multinational U.N. force
might start handing over to U.N. peacekeepers in late January and most
would be gone within three months. 

U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has invited Ali Mahdi,
Aideed and other Somali leaders to Addis Ababa on January 4 to discuss a
long-term solution for their wrecked nation. 

For the moment, Somalis seemed fascinated by the display of Western
military muscle which quelled Mogadishu's mayhem. 

A U.S. Marine patrol almost disappeared among hundreds of smiling
Somalis when it walked through an old city district notorious for
muggings. The crowd panicked for a moment when the Marines crouched in
combat positions to disarm a gunman. 

"It's like trying to patrol Disneyland," said Lance-Corporal Mark
Burnett, from St Louis, Missouri. 

REUTER AL JP PAE  <<>>APn  12/11 1751  Urban Hunger

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By SONYA ROSS 

Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A growing number of hungry and homeless Americans --
including many children -- had to be turned away by public agencies and
private groups this year, the nation's mayors said Friday. 

In releasing its annual report on hunger and homelessness, the U.S.
Conference of Mayors said unemployment and its accompanying problems
were to blame for the increased requests at a time of limited resources.
It said the solution lay in creating jobs with salaries that keep pace
with the cost of living. 

"This report is really a chronicle of shame," said Boston Mayor Ray
Flynn, past president of the conference. "The solution is going to cost
money, the solution is going to require political will that has not
existed. We need a clear agenda of jobs ... and affordable housing." 

Researchers found an 18 percent increase over the past year in requests
for emergency food assistance, with children or their parents making up
two of every three people seeking food. 

City and private agencies turned down an average of 21 percent of the
requests, up from 17 percent in 1991, the reporv said. Resources
available for food assistance rose only by 6 percent from 1991. 

Requests for emergency shelter went up by 14 percent this year, and
about 23 percent of those people had to be turned away. The rejections
were up from 15 percent a year earlier. Seventy-two percent of the
cities reported having to turn away homeless people due to a lack of
resources. 

The survey was based on estimates provided by 29 cities, all of which
participate in the conference's Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness.
The information covers a period from November 1991 through October 1992.


" Only percentages were provided, because the cities based their
estimates on figures gleaned from non-profit agencies or community
groups that keep only informal tallies on the people they serve, said
researcher Laura Waxman. 

Among the causes for homelessness, city officials listed unemployment,
poverty, drug abuse, mental illness and a lack of services. 

An estimated 55 percent of homeless people were single men, and 32
percent were families with children. Forty-one percent were drug abusers
or alcoholics and 28 percent were mentally ill. 

"People are growing tired of seeing the homeless," said Jim Scheibel,
mayor of St. Paul, Minn., and task force chairman. "They want the
problem to go away. The way to make the problem go away ... is to
address the problems in the report." 

The survey also found: 

--74 percent of survey cities said state budget cuts had hampered their
ability to serve homeless people. 

--46 percent of cities were unable to provide enough food for those
requesting it. 

--72 percent of cities reported their low income neighborhoods had poor
access to supermarkets. 

--62 percent of cities reported that homeless families sometimes must
break up in order to get shelter. 

--62 percent of cities lacked sufficient services for mentally ill
homeless people. 

Participating cities were Alexandria, Va.; Boston; Charleston, S.C.;
Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Cleveland; Denver; Detroit; Hartford, Conn.;
Kansas City, Mo.; Los Angeles; Louisville; Miami; Minneapolis;
Nashville; New Orleans; New York; Norfolk, Va.; Philadelphia; Phoenix;
Portland, Ore.; St. Paul.; Salt Lake City; San Antonio, Texas; San
Diego; San Francisco; Santa Monica, Calif.; Seattle and Trenton, N.J. 

<<>>RTw  12/11 1304  AFRICAN LEADERS PLEDGE TROOPS FOR SOMALIA

HARARE, Dec 11, Reuter - Southern African leaders pledged on Friday to
contribute troops to the United Nations force sent to reopen supply
lines to Somalia's starving millions. 

"Most of the...frontline states expressed a desire to support (the U.N.
operation) and they will be sending units of various sizes to Somalia,"
Zimbabwe's Foreign Minister Nathan Shamuyarira said. 

He was speaking at a news conference after a one-day summit in the
Zimbabwe capital of the seven black "frontline" states committed to
opposing apartheid in white-ruled South Africa. 

Zimbabwe is to send an estimated 1,000 troops to Somalia. 

Shamuyarira said the leaders of Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia,
Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe called on other African countries to join
the United States and Europe in sending troops to protect famine relief
operations in the Hoirn of Africa country from pillage by warring clans.


"African states should play an important part to bring peace to
Somalia," he said. 

REUTER GNM CTC AET  <<>>RTw  12/11 1055  60 MILLION AFRICANS FACE STARVATION- U.N. OFFICIAL

LAGOS, Dec 11, Reuter - Sixty million people in east and southern Africa
are facing starvation due to a food crisis caused by political conflicts
and ineffective development strategies, a U.N. official has said. 

Layashi Yaker, head of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, was
quoted by the News Agency of Nigeria on Friday as saying unrest and poor
economic planning had undermined the ability of some African states to
feed themselves. 

"No elaborately carved out development strategy, important as it is,
will ensure sustainable food production unless the countries of the
continent resolved their political conflicts," he said. 

Yaker told a conference in Nigeria's southern city of Ibadan that
"brushing aside the continent's political reality and preaching the
gospel of sustainable food production was tantamount to making an
omelette without breaking eggs." 

He said internal political conflicts in some African nations have led to
massive migration and displacement of people which compounded food
production problems. 

REUTER TO DRB  <<>>RTw  12/11 1035  U.N. CONFERENCE PLEDGES TO END FAMINE BY 2000

By Vera Haller 

ROME, Dec 11, Reuter - Faced with starvation in Somalia and new
emergencies in Mozambique and Sudan, the world's governments on Friday
pledged to eliminate famine by the year 2000. 

"Hunger and malnutrition are unacceptable in a world that has both the
knowledge and the resources to end this human catastrophe," stated a
resolution adopted by delegates at the end of a six-day United Nations
nutrition conference. 

Government ministers from some 160 countries participated in the
International Conference on Nutrition, sponsored by the Rome-based U.N.
Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Health
Organisation (WHO). 

According to U.N. figures, the world produces enough food to feed the
entire planet, but 780 million people still go hungry. 

But there was some disagreement over the principle of foreign powers
intervening in countries where war has kept food aid from reaching the
starving, as in Somalia. 

The conference's declaration addressed the issue in a section on war and
civil disturbances, stating: 

"All responsible parties should cooperate to ensure the safe and timely
passage and distribution of appropriate food and medical supplies to
those in need..." 

Delegates from Mexico, Venezuela and Guatamala, while not objecting to
the statement, cautioned that it should not be seen as license to use
food aid as a political weapon. 

"The Mexican delegation believes that this guarantee should not be used
to breach the sovereignty of nations," Mexico said. 

Pope John Paul, in his opening address to the conference on Saturday,
said the international community had a duty to intervene if war or
internal strife led to starvation. 

During the conference, an FAO expert said the next emergency after
Somalia could be in Mozambique, where refugees returning after a 16-year
civil war have no food. He also said civil war threatened people in
southern Sudan with starvation. 

Organisers rejected criticism that the conference was little more than a
talking shop and said it would raise awareness and show governments the
way towards ending world hunger. 

FAO Secretary-General Edouard Saouma acknowledged that while the
conference presented a framework to end hunger, it offered no special
fund for developing countries to implement it. 

He called for increased aid from rich countries. 

The World Declaration on Nutrition, adopted by the government ministers,
set goals including the ending of all famine and famine-related deaths
by the end of the decade. 

Working from the premise that poverty was the underlying cause of hunger
the conference adopted a plan for ministers to follow, containing
strategies in areas such as agricultural policy, family planning and
improved access to food. 

Ministers have been asked to report their progress to the FAO and WHO
before the end of 1994. 

REUTER VH ASB  <<>>RTw  12/11 1005  BELGIAN PARATROOPERS READY TO LEAVE FOR SOMALIA

By Sue Pleming 

DIEST, Belgium, Dec 11, Reuter - Belgian paratroopers were set to leave
for Somalia on Friday, satisfied their previous experience of Africa
would boost the U.S.-led operation. 

"Many of our men have been on operations in Zaire and this will help us.
We are used to the tough conditions in Africa," Lieutenant-Colonel Marc
Jacqmin, who will command the Belgian troops in Somalia, told Reuters. 

Belgian paratroopers have been in Zaire and Rwanda over the past two
years to protect Belgian citizens in the former colonies during
political turmoil. 

The first 120 paratroopers from the First Battalion in Diest, east of
Brussels, are due to leave for Somalia at about 1900 GMT. They will stop
in neighbouring Djibouti to refuel. 

The Belgian contingent in the operation to safeguard famine relief
supply lines in Somalia totals 587. Jacqmin expects all of his troops to
be in place by the end of next week. 

He hopes the paratroopers, who expect to be in Somalia for one year,
will be deployed in the port of Kismayu where there has been heavy
fighting between Somali warlords in recent days. 

"But we will finalise our plans in Mogadishu and the rules of engagement
will be sorted out then," Jacqmin said. 

Belgian weapons, to be transported in Hercules C-130 aircraft, includes
81 mm mortars, Milan anti-tank missile launchers and machineguns. 

The elite paratroopers put the finishing touches to their newly-painted,
tough-terrain vehicles on Friday. 

Corporal Hedwig Berinckx pasted Belgian flags onto his truck, re-painted
in United Nations white. "I was in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi in Zaire last
year for six weeks and I think Somalia might be similar. My family finds
it all painful that I am going, but it's my job and I have to do it,"
Berinckx said. 

Lieutenant Tom Schutyser, the battalion's second in command, said the
troops had strict instructions not to fire first if confronted by
gunmen. "We are said to be among the toughest paratroopers in the world
and I am sure we will cope well in any situation," Schutyser said. 

Captain Guy Borgers, head of the medical unit, said his team was
prepared for the worst, but hoped casualties would be low. His main
challenge was maintaining hygiene in the intense heat. 

Keeping food clean was another. "I'm not looking forward to the American
rations we'll have to eat until our own food arrives. We have seven
menus worked out, including a couple of Belgian favourites like
Carbonnades Flamandes (beef casserole)," he said. 

REUTER SEP ASB  <<>>RTw  12/11 0933  U.S. MARINES USE SOMALIA AID FOR SANDBAGS

MOGADISHU, Dec 11, Reuter - U.S. Marines have found a novel use for
sacks of food awaiting delivery to Somalia's starving. They're using
them as sandbags against snipers. 

"They're the best thing we had going," explained Marine Lieutenant
Kenneth Braunlich, posted behind one of the emplacements at the entrance
doors to warehouses in Mogadishu's port. 

"That'll stop a bullet," he said, pointing to one of the 50 lb (20 kilo)
sacks of maize and dried beans, all marked with the words "Gift from
France" and the red, white and blue of the French flag. 

Braunlich, from Denver Colorado, said Somali snipers on heights north of
the port had taken occasional potshots at the Marines during the past
two nights. 

U.S. Marines landed on Wednesday to secure the port and the main airport
at the start of Operation Restore Hope, the U.S. led armed intervention
in Somalia to keep looting gunmen away from desperately needed food aid.


In the port warehouses, they found several thousand tonnes of aid
stockpiled because relief agencies had been unable to get it past
looting gunmen to the hundreds of thousands of Somalis hit by famine. 

On Friday, some of the sacks piled four or five high at warehouse
entrances with machine guns on top. 

At one depot, four U.S. navy servicemen sat on another of the makeshift
emplacements playing cards while waiting to unload the U.S. supply ship
1st Lt. Jack Lummus, which docked on Friday. 

"Actually we're using them as chairs right now," said Boatsman's Mate
John Blasio, one of the members of the card school. 

CARE International, which distributes food aid for the United Nations in
Somalia, said it was saddened that the Marines were using the food sacks
as sandbags. 

"There's enough sand there," said CARE spokeswoman Cynthia Osterman. 

"This food is intended to go to starving people. It's not military
material and...we don't want it misdirected," she said. 

REUTER PAH JMC DJG  <<>>RTw  12/11 0907  CHENEY HOPES MOST TROOPS IN SOMALIA OUT IN THREE MONTHS

By Rolf Soderlind 

BRUSSELS, Dec 11, Reuter - U.S. Defence Secretary Dick Cheney said on
Friday he hoped most American troops would leave Somalia within three
months. 

He added however that a force of Marines could stay off the coast to
back up U.N. peace-keepers. 

Cheney, addressing a news conference after a NATO meeting, defended the
killing of two Somalis by French troops after a vehicle tried to ram a
barricade in Mogadishu. He said U.S. troops would do the same if they
felt threatened. 

U.S. troops are spearheading a 35,000-strong force,drawn from about 17
countries, to safeguard food supplies and alleviate one of the worst
famines this century. 

Asked when the U.S. Marines would leave Somalia, Cheney said they would
not be out by January 20 when President-elect Bill Clinton assumes
power. 

"If you are asking me will every single American be out of Somalia
within two months? No. Will the bulk of the forces we are putting in
there be gone within three months? We hope so," Cheney said. 

But he said the withdrawal might begin "by the latter part of January"
if everything went well. 

Announcing the decision to send over 28,000 troops to Somalia last week,
outgoing President George Bush said the intention was for them to hand
over the job to a U.N. peace-keeping force, possibly before Clinton
takes over. 

Cheney said the United States was prepared to deploy off the Somali
coast an amphibious readiness group of about 1,500 Marines backed by
helicopter gunships.

It could come to the aid of U.N. peacekeepers if they run into problems
after U.S. forces pull out, he said. 

"We are prepared to leave behind a residue of specialists and some
combat capability off the coast should that be warranted in order to
support a sustained U.N. effort to maintain peace and security." 

Specialists would include logistics and combat support units many other
nations did not possess, Cheney said. 

In Washington, a senior official said on Thursday the U.S. role in
Somalia was already expanding beyond its original humanitarian limits
and Washington was under pressure to take on more and more tasks in the
East African nation. 

The State Department official, who spoke to Reuters on condition he not
be identified, said getting U.S. troops out of Somalia was likely to
become a big problem for Clinton. 

Asking about the shooting incident, Cheney dismissed calls for the
French legionnaires to be held responsible for Thursday's incident. 

"Certainly these situations are always regrettable but any suggestion
that the troops in any way have conducted themselves in an irresponsible
manner or used excessive force would be inaccurate," he said. "I simply
don't share that view. 

"If...a couple of Somalis charged through a road block and refused to
stop, then certainly I would think that our people would justify it in
defending themselves against what they thought was perhaps a potentially
hostile act." 

He said weapons were in the hands of irresponsible people who had
interfered with relief supplies or were high on drugs. 

"It is a potentially dangerous situation. Our people...will take what
ever measures to defend themselves." 

REUTER RAS NHD JSF  <<>>APn  12/11 0858  Somalia-The Starving

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By TINA SUSMAN 

Associated Press Writer 

AFGOI, Somalia (AP) -- Sick, starving children who hang onto life at a
refugee camp here are waiting for help from U.S. Marines. But for some,
it may come too late. 

A few miles northwest of Mogadishu in Afgoi is the Lafoole refugee camp,
a collection of leaky stick hovels where aid wmrkers provide some food
and, sporadically, medicine for refugees too tired to stagger the final
12 miles to the capital from rural areas and other towns. 

Osman Riyole, 37, sits with Hassam, his only surviving son. Once a
prosperous landowner in the farming town of Warmhun, 90 miles away,
Osman lost everything to looters. His six other children died on the
trek to Mogadishu. 

He picks up Hassam, and explains that the 10-year-old hasn't eaten
anything relief workers put in front of him for two months. 

Accustomed to millet and meat, Hassam rejects the porridge-like Unimix
served to camp residents. After losing all his siblings to famine, Osman
says, Hassam may simply have given up. He is alive mainly thanks to
antibiotics but is a stumbling, marionette-like figure who leaves his
hut only when pulled outside by aid workers. 

Hindia Asman, 10, also fled Warmhun with her mother, father and seven
siblings. One of the children died at the camp; the rest are squeezed
together with their parents in a smoky hut. 

Hindia's face is horribly bloated, eyes swollen shut from the effects of
malnutrition, malaria and tropical diseases too strong for the clinic to
handle.

She gets worse every day, said the clinic administrator, Aden Ali Abdi,
as Hindia tried to walk on her puffy feet. 

In Mogadishu, a 20-minute drive down the highway, there are few signs of
famine because relief agencies have managed to supply the capital,
especially the southern half. 

The international relief agency CARE, which distributes about 80 percent
of relief aid, has not attempted to ship food north of the city since
Nov. 11, when trucks heading to Baidoa, 125 miles northwest of
Mogadishu, were ambushed. 

CARE, like most relief agencies, has cut back to just two foreign
workers in Baidoa, where 50 to 60 new deaths are reported each day. 

Five Hercules C-130 cargo planes landed at Baidoa on Wednesday, but
airlifts have done little for hundreds of thousands of people living in
surrounding villages who cannot reach the food. 

Gen. Robert Johnston, commander of U.S. forces in Somalia, said Marines
expected to move into Baidoa within seven to 10 days. 

Military officials had said the Marines would escort a 10-truck convoy
into Baidoa on Saturday, but violence in the capital -- including a
firefight between warring clans Thursday night -- seemed to be delaying
deployments outside the capital. 

In the far south, Kismayo has been virtually deserted by relief agencies
because of widespread clan violence. It is expected to be among the last
places U.S. troops enter. 

<<>>RTw  12/11 0803  POPE SAYS POVERTY THREATENS PEACE

VATICAN CITY, Dec 11, Reuter - Pope John Paul warned on Friday rising
poverty throughout the world presented a clear threat to peace and urged
rich nations to do more to help poor countries, especially by easing
their debt burden. 

"I would like to call attention to the threat to peace posed by poverty,
especially when it becomes destitution," the Pontiff said in a speech to
mark World Peace day on January 1, 1993. 

In an advance copy released on Friday, he said there were millions of
men, women and children suffering every day from from hunger, insecurity
and enmargination. 

"These situations constitute a grave affront to human dignity and
contribute to social instability." 

The world's rich must give a hand to poor nations of Africa, Latin
America and Asia that had borrowed heavily and were now struggling under
the burden of austerity programmes, he said. 

"Perhaps the time has come to re-examine the problem of debt and to give
it the priority it deserves. The conditions for total or partial
repayment need to be reviewed." 

He asked: "Is it not the poorest groups which often have to bear the
major burden of repayment?" 

The granting of aid to developing countries should be made in return for
promises to cut unnecessary spending, particularly on arms, and to
guarantee subsidies reached the needy. 

During the Cold War, many developing nations used aid from the West and
the then Soviet bloc to buy advanced weapons while their populations
often starved. 

But the Pope also blasted Western materialism for widening the gap
between rich and poor as the frenzied race for possessing material goods
blinded people to the needs of others. 

"The quantity of goods consumed by a tiny fraction of the world
population produces a demand greater than available resources." 

REUTER YT PFS  <<>>RTw  12/11 0739  UN MAKES PLANS TO REPATRIATE SOMALI REFUGEES

By Stephanie Nebehay 

GENEVA, Dec 11, Reuter - The United Nations is drawing up urgent plans
to repatriate up to half a million Somali refugees encouraged to return
home by the arrival of a U.S.-led military force, U.N. officials said on
Friday. 

The officials said security had to be established first in Somalia -- or
they might face a new influx of Somali refugees to neighbouring Horn of
Africa nations. 

"The feeling in camps over the last days has led our people in Kenya to
ask us to draw up emergency contingency plans for a fast and massive
repatriation," a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR) told reporters. 

"As many as 500,00 might want to be repatriated as soon as security is
reestablished," said Sylvana Foa, referring to refugees in Kenya and
Ethiopia. 

American and allied troops arrived in Mogadishu on Wednesday to protect
relief aid from marauders.Some 35,000 soldiers are expected to help
protect U.N. famine relief efforts. 

One UNHCR official commented: "If there are huge battles, there is
always the possibility of having new refugees flooding into Kenya." 

Worldwide, there are nearly one million Somali refugees who have fled
anarchy, civil war and the effects of drought in their homeland in
search of food and water. 

About 300,000 Somali refugees live in crowded camps in Kenya and another
300,000 in Ethiopia, according to UNHCR estimates. 

"People have a new sense of security and are talking about going home,"
she commented. "People want to go home to get their house back or get
there before someone steals their land." 

"Life in the camps is not wonderful," Foa commented. "It's not exactly
the Club Med." 

The humanitarian agency usually gives refugees -- who volunteer to
return to their homeland-- start-up money, as well as seeds and farm
tools for the first six or 12 months. 

UNHCR would also provide shelter materials and transport for the
refugees, many of whom fled on foot, she added. 

Asked when repatriation might begin, Foa replied: "We're thinking maybe
by March things would have calmed down enough. 

"We would not initiate repatriation ourselves until we consider
conditions on the ground to be perfectly safe," she added, noting that
mines had to be cleared in Somalia. 

REUTER SMN JSF  <<>>RTw  12/11 0645  RELIEF GROUPS READY TO BOOST SOMALIA AID EFFORT

By Francis Mdlongwa 

NAIROBI, Dec 11, Reuter - International aid agencies said on Friday they
were ready to boost their mercy mission to famished Somalia once U.N.
troops had put an end to gun law. 

"Discussions are going on to see how aid agencies can get army escorts
from the United Nations troops in Somalia to move the food to the worst
affected areas in the interior of the country," said World Food
Programme (WFP) official Brenda Barton. 

"We are ready to move in quickly, within days, once we get the
clearance." 

Maura Barry of the charity CARE said: "We are looking to boosting our
relief effort once we are assured about security." 

CARE has been establishing feeding centres mainly in Mogadishu and the
war-torn southern towns of Baidoa and Bardera. 

Barton said:"There is plenty of food donated by various governments and
organisations. It's now just a matter of quickly moving it to its
beneficiaries inside Somalia." 

WFP had been given 165,000 tonnes of food aid this year for Somalia,
where at least 1.5 million of the country's six million people face
starvation. 

"Of the total food aid, we have since May this year delivered about
80,000 tonnes. Other aid agencies have been doing the same," she said. 

"The rest of the food aid pledged is in the pipeline -- being
transported to Somalia or neighbouring states such as Kenya -- ready to
be moved to Somalia once we are told that it is safe to do so." 

Gangs of gunmen, owing allegiance to warlords competing for power since
the 1991 overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, have plunged the Horn
of Africa nation into anarchy, frequently looting food for the starving.


More than 300,000 Somalis have already died. Hundreds of thousands have
fled into neighbouring states as refugees. 

A senior U.S. official, Andrew Natsios, said on Thursday that 4.5
million Somalis had been "severely affected" by the famine. 

U.S. Marines began arriving in Somalia's capital Mogadishu on Wednesday
to police the distribution of the food aid at the head of a
U.N.-mandated mercy mission dubbed Operation Restore Hope. The
multinational force could eventually swell to 37,000. 

Claire Bourgeios of Belgium's Medecins Sans Frontieres, working mostly
in the ruined and dangerous port city of Kismayu, said the group would
increase the 150 tonnes aid it had been flying in each month. 

"We will need to carry out a survey and see what additional food and
medicines are needed," she said. 

REUTER FIM FK DJG  <<>>APn  12/11 0017  Homeless Housing

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By TOM HAYS 

Associated Press Writer 

NEW YORK (AP) -- When Debra Brown recently ventured into a blighted
section of Brooklyn looking for a place to live, she barely noticed the
vacant buildings, the abandoned cars and the open drug dealing. 

A new four-story brick structure with pitched roofs and cupolas,
however, turned her head. 

"I said, `Oh my God. Someone has lost their mind in the middle of East
New York,"' the 37-year-old single mother recalled. 

Perhaps it once was a crazy idea -- building a stylish, $20 million
housing complex in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods -- but it's
now a model of low-income housing. 

The Genesis development, home to 150 low-income and formerly homeless
families, and the adjoining Nelson R. Mandela Community Center were
dedicated Thursday in a ceremony attended by Gov. Mario Cuomo, Mayor
David Dinkins and other dignitaries who hailed it as a beacon of hope in
a world of despair. 

"The trut` is you cannot put a value on the tremendous benefit that will
come from Genesis," Cuomo said. 

The 186,000-square-foot complex has a large interior courtyard with a
playground, open corridors and no elevators -- all designed to provide
more security. 

Project developers also say it represents a more progressive approach to
welfare. Tenants, who pay between $400 and $700 a month rent, are
encouraged to help manage, police and repair the building. Tenants whose
work results in savings are rewarded with a rebate at the end of the
year. 

The arrangement has given Genesis residentq a great sense of community,
said Brown, a complex manager. 

"The tenants look out for each other," she said. "We watch out for each
other's children." 

<<>>UPn  12/11 0016  CDC says disease taking huge toll in Somalia

By CHARLES S. TAYLOR 

ATLANTA (UPI) -- Populations of Somali towns are being decimated not
only by starvation but also by preventable diseases such as measles,
diarrhea, dysentery, respiratory infections and malaria, federal health
officials say. 

The Centers for Disease Control said Thursday that two surveys taken in
November and early December revealed that such diseases were rampant in
the war-ravaged east African nation, where U.S. troops have been sent to
protect deliveries of humanitarian relief to starving Somalis. 

But even if adequate food supplies reach the inland Somalian towns "if
we ignore other things such as the treatment of measles and diarrhea, we
will continue to lose children," said Dr. Anthony A. Marfin, an
epidemiologist with the CDC. 

Marfin said diseases that normally would not be fatal in healthy people
had decimated the famine-stricken populations of some towns in Somalia. 

"As many as one-fourth to one-third of the deaths (among children) are
from measles alone," he said. 

"What we are seeing in these people is that 50 to 80 percent of the
deaths are from measles and diarrhea," Marfin said. 

The CDC said high priority should be given to measles vaccination, oral
rehydration, and vitamin A supplementation for all children under 5. 

The health surveys were conducted Nov. 20-25 and Dec. 5-6 in the towns
of Baldoa and Afgol by the CDC in collaboration with the United Nations
Children's Fund and the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

The surveys found that in early August, the estimated population of the
town of Baldoa was 37,000; by Nov. 20 the population had decreased to
about 21,000. The CDC said many of the deaths were among refugees
fleeing from the drought- and famine-stricken countryside. 

"Each morning, dead persons found in the city were counted after they
were transported by truck for burial," the CDC said. From Aug. 9 through
Nov. 14, 12,255 bodies were transported for burial, or 37 percent of the
town's estimated population. An additional 3,700 or 10 percent of the
population may have emigrated or died and been buried without being
counted, the CDC reported. 

The most common reported causes of death, the health agency said, were
diarrhea, responsible for 55 percent of the deaths and caused by
infections such as shigella, and measles, responsible for 23 percent of
the deaths. 

The survey in the town of Afgol had to be cut short because of security
concerns, the CDC said, but from a check of 767 long-term residents and
237 displaced persons, the CDC found a death rate of 9 percent over a
eight-month period. As in Baldoa, children under age 5 were at the
highest risk for death and the major causes of death were measles and
diarrhea. 

Mortality rates in the Somalia towns "are among the highest ever
documented by a population survey among famine-affected civilians," the
CDC said. 

Marfin said the task in Somalia is to "get the food out there, get the
clean water sources, vaccinate against measles and treat the diarrhea
and we've got to get the vitamin A out there." 

Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>UPn  12/11 0015  French forces kills two Somalis running roadblock

By United Press International 

French Foreign Legionnaires serving with the predominately American
United Nations relief force in Somalia fired on an armed truck that
tried to run a roadblock and killed two of its passengers, the Pentagon
reported. 

Marine Lt. Gen. Martin Brandtner, director of operations for the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday in Washington that nine Somali irregulars
in a truck with a weapon mounted on it tried to run the roadblock set up
on the northwest portion of the defensive perimeter surrounding the
airport in the Somali capital Mogadishu. 

When the Somalis failed to halt as ordered, he said, the French opened
fire and the truck rolled over. Two Somalis were shot dead, two more
wounded and five injured in the crash of the vehicle. 

All the injured and wounded Somalis were taken to the American
amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli, from which the American advance
guard of 1,7000 Marines landed in Mogadishu earlier this week. 

The small French contingent, which joined the U.S. Marines in Mogadishu
on Wednesday, were the first of a promised 2,000 to arrive. They and an
American force that is expected to reach 28,000 will be under the
command of Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Johnston, who arrived in Mogadishu on
Thursday. 

The American force is in Somalia at the request of the United Nations
Security Council to ensure that food and medicine gets to starving
Somalis in the war and famine-ravaged country. Before their arrival,
armed gangs of Somalis disrupted distribution of the supplies and looted
much of it for their own use. 

The American force in Mogadisu prepared the airport and harbor to
receive reinforcements and made their first foray Thursday outside the
Somali capital. 

Brandtner said by Friday there will be "over 25 airlift sorties bringing
in troops. So the Mogadishu airport is going to be extremely busy." 

He said advance elements of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force from Camp
Pendleton, Calif, will arrive Friday and that troops from the Army's
10th Division of light infantry will follow on Saturday. 

C-130 transport planes guarded by Marine helicopter gunships made their
first flights Thursday into the inland airstrip at Bale Dogle, which
will become a staging area for relief supplies. 

"The security situation at Bale Dogle looked to be good," reported Rear
Adm. Micharl Cramer, director of current intelligence for the Joint
Chiefs. He said that several trucks with armed Somali irregulars drove
away from the airstrip when the Marine helicopters approached and others
were simply abandoned. 

Elsewhere in Somalia, Cramer said, in the inland town of Baidoa and the
southern costal town of Kismayo, fighting still raged among rival
factions in a multi-sided civil war. 

The JCS intelligence offcer said each group was apparently trying to
gain the most favorable position for itself at the expense of the others
before the Americans arrive in force to impose a peace. 

"To coin a phrase," Cramer said, "it almost seems as if the factions are
fractionalizing themselves. They are breaking down." 

Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>APn  12/11 0002  Somalia-No Preparing

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By LESLIE DREYFOUS 

AP National Writer 

Cpl. Jerome Taylor knows he can't truly prepare for Somalia's human
misery. Growing up poor and black in Selma, Ala., wasn't easy, but this
suffering is on a scale that doesn't exist in America. 

"All those starving people, wasting away, begging you to help them. And
you know, even the ones you help, a lot of them will die, too," said
Taylor, whose Army unit may deploy any day from Fort Drum, N.Y. 

"I don't think any of us are going to be prepared for the reality of it
once we're seeing it close up," said Taylor, 21. His 41st Engineering
Battalion unit was shown a video intended to sensitize -- or desensitize
-- soldiers to the pain they'll witness. 

But it won't be enough. Nothing could be enough, speculated Capt.
Chester Egert, one of 21 chaplains who has counseled Fort Drum soldiers
in recent days. It's just the best anyone can do. 

"It's hard to sit down with an 18-year-old sometimes and talk about his
own future. Sometimes they don't think any further than the weekend, let
alone what's the purpose of my life," Egert said. 

But, the chaplain said, these young men and women may soon find
themselves forever changed. "Part of the issue is dealing with mortality
and the purpose of their life," he said. "I see Somalia as an
opportunity to do something for humanity." 

For American troops pushing deeper into Somalia's starving interior, the
idea of a Saturday night movie and dinner may quickly seem achingly
irrelevant in the faces of the children they'll find there. 

Operation Restore Hope has little to do with the John Wayne swagger or
cowboy machismo some young soldiers may have had in mind when they
enlisted. 

This war is more about life than death, more about healing than
wrestling an enemy to the ground. Warlords and their gun-toting
partisans may need to be put down, but defeating hunger is the mission's
true objective. 

This gives Leon Bass a real sense of hope. As a young soldier in World
War II, he came unexpectedly upon the unimaginable horror of the Nazi
concentration camp at Buchenwald. 

He had none of the forewarning that the troops today are getting, so
found the skeletal Jewish survivors perhaps even more shocking. But
really, he said, how do you measure such things? 

"It's going to change their lives," said Bass, 67, a retired jigh school
principal from Yardley, Pa. "They are more prepared than I was, but in
actually living through it day by day, walking by it -- for that you're
never prepared." 

But it is at least a humanitarian mission, a mission whose message Bass
prays will spread at home as well as abroad. 

"The soldiers who go over and see this, many of them might have seen
homelessness," Bass said. "But they can think, `It's not touching me.
It's something I've seen on television or when visiting New York City.' 

"Maybe now these young people will take stock of their lives, look for
ways to help and vo heal. Maybe they'll come back with that kind of
feeling and become our congressmen, our leaders, our presidents," he
said. "Young people need to see that my pain is your pain." 

Few who have been seared by the television images of Africa's bloated,
hollow-eyed hunger would disagree. But parents, spouses, those who are
sending off soldiers naive to the reality of such misery are still
frightened. 

Each day a few more calls come in on Yvonne Minor's hotline for military
families. Sitting at her kitchen table in Savage, Minn., she tries to
reassure relatives who are afraid their loved ones will never be the
same. 

"It's different from the Gulf War. The parents are so afraid for their
kids psychologically this time," said Minor, who founded Back Our
Courageous Military when Iraq's Saddam Hussein was the No. 1 enemy. 

"They're worried about whether their children can handle it. We can turn
the channel. They won't be able to do that." 

They won't be able to turn away from horrifying images. Counselors say
those serving in Somalia will agonize at not being able to share their
MREs with people whose systems are too weak to digest the military food.
They will likely suffer nightmares. 

"I admit to the soldiers I do not know what it is like to see people who
have not eaten for six months," said Capt. William McCoy, who has been
counseling soldiers at Fort Drum. 

"I also emphasize to them that their emotions are going to be wracked,
and that's a normal occurrence. It's normal to retch at sights of
unbelievable atrocity. It's normal to cry. It's normal not to sleep." 

<<>>RTw  12/10 1949  RELIEF EFFORT CAN LEVEL OFF FAMINE DEATHSIAL 

By Carol Giacomo 

WASHINGTON, Dec 10, Reuter - The U.S.-led military relief effort in
Somalia will likely begin stabilising the number of deaths by starvation
by the end of the month, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday. 

Andrew Natsios, U.S. aid coordinator for Somalia, said the U.S. effort
could become a model for dealing with complex humanitarian emergencies
like that in Somalia. 

The arrival of American and allied troops in Mogadishu two days ago has
drastically affected Somalia's political climate and suggests that quick
introduction of massive military force for such missions has its
benefits. 

By employing troops, this is "a precedent-setting event that will live
beyond the event itself as a model for other interventions of a similar
kind," he told reporters. 

The troops -- expected to reach eventually 35,000 from a dozen nations
-- are part of a U.N.-mandated operation to keep food for starving
Somalis out of the hands of looting bandits. 

Natsios said 4.5 million Somalis are "severely affected" by the famine
and two million are at risk of dying. Three hundred thousand are
believed to have died in the past year. 

While the starvation rate is expected to fall in three weeks to a month
because more food can now flow, "it does not mean starvation is going to
end," he said. 

"Even if we did alleviate starvation, the death rate would be high in
certain areas because we've got to deal with other issues" of water
contamination and epidemics like tuberculosis, dysentery, measles and
pneumomia, he said. 

An estimated 52,000 tonnes of food a month is needed to feed 4.5 million
people in southern Somalia. Natsios said relief agencies had been
receiving 37,000 tonnes in October and November and hoped to reach soon
the 52,000-tonne level. 

"The introduction of American and allied troops into Somalia has changed
the power mix so dramatically that everybody's willing to change their
seemingly intractable positions politically and that's a very hopeful
sign," said Natsios.

He drew a distinction between Somalia and U.N. operations in Cambodia
and Yugoslavia that involve a large international presence, although no
U.S. troops.

"What the U.N. has used as a model -- and we supported them, I'm not
being critical -- is to gradually move in troops in small numbers into
these other emergencies, and the effect has been not to change the
balance of power," he said. 

The Somalia "intervention so far appears to have done the opposite -- to
change the structure of power in a way that will give some cover to the
relief effort," he said. 

REUTER CG RAA GE  <<>>APn  12/10 1640  Somalia-Relief-List

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By The Associated Press 

Names, addresses and telephone numbers of some relief agencies in the
United States taking donations for Somalia. 

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 711 Third Ave., 10th
floor, New York, N.Y., 10017. (212) 687-6200. 

AmeriCares, 161 Cherry St., New Canaan, Conn., 06840. 1-800-486-HELP. 

Disaster Relief Fund of B'nai B'rith, send checks 1640 Rhode Island Ave.
N.W. Washington, D.C., 20036. 1-202-857-6582 (donations) 1-202-857-6536
(press). 

CARE, 660 First Ave., New York, N.Y., 10016. 1-800-521-CARE. 

Caritas International Inc., P.O. Box 10-0179, Brooklyn, N.Y., 11210.
(718) 252-3684. 

Catholic Relief Services, P.O. Box 17090, Baltimore, Md., 21298-9664.
1-800-SEND-HOPE. 

Christian Children's Fund, 203 E. Cary St., Richmond, Va., 23219.
1-800-441-1000. 

Direct Relief International, P.O. Box 30820, Santa Barbara, Calif.,
93130. 

Food for the Hungry, 7729 E. Greenway Rd., Scottsdale, Ariz., 85260.
1-800-2-HUNGER. 

Inter-Lutheran Disaster Relief, 8765 W. Higgins Rd., Chicago, 60631.,
215-395-6891. (Leon Phillips) 

Mennonite Central Committee, 21 S. 12th St., P.O. Box 500, Akron, Pa.,
17501-0500. 

Oxfam America, 115 Broadway, Boston, Mass., 02116. (617) 482-1211. 

Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief, 815 Second Ave., New York,
N.Y., 10017. (212) 922-5144. 

Salvation Army World Service Office, 799 Bloomfield Ave., Verona, N.J.
07044. (201) 857-8822. 

Save the Children, Box 975, Westport, Conn., 06881. (203) 221-4000. 

The U.S. Committee for UNICEF, 333 E. 38th St., New York, N.Y., 10016. 

United Methodist Committee on Relief, P. O. Box 5050, Church St.
Station, New York, N.Y., 10249. 

World Concern, P.O. Box 33000, Seattle, Wash., 98133. 

World Vision, P.O. Box 1131, Pasadena, Ca. 91131, 1-800-423-4200. 

<<>>UPn  12/10 1554  Food banks running short

CHICAGO (UPI) -- A survey by a national food bank network indicates
nearly 12.5 percent of the U.S. population -- 30 million people -- will
go hungry during the holiday season. 

Second Harvest reported Thursday that its 185 member food banks, which
supply 46,000 local agencies, report supplies will fail to meet
increased consumer demand. 

"Although people are more conscious of the needs of the hungry during
the holidays, hunger in America is a year-round problem," said Christine
Vladimiroff, president of Second Harvest. 

"Since 1985, we've seen a nearly 50 percent increase in the number of
people suffering from hunger....And as our survey indicated, food banks
expect to experience the greatest shortages at this time in foods high
in nutrition and protein." 

Vladimiroff said 59 percent of food banks report increased donations in
1992 but fully a third of food banks surveyed said their donations had
fallen. 

Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>APn  12/10 1535  Somalia-Clans

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By REID G. MILLER 

Associated Press Writer 

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Amid the chaos and famine being visited upon
this country like a biblical plague, one element of its fragmented
society endures: the clan. 

Clan rivalries helped destroy Somalia. Clan cohesiveness could help put
it back together. 

Ismat Kittani, the U.N. special envoy to Somalia, and many others see
clan elders, the society's traditional mediators and judges, as the only
remainkng semblance of authority and the hope for the future. 

Using the elders as a foundation, Kittani hopes to slowly rebuild the
country, stacking the scattered building blocks of society one atop the
other until Somalia again has the edifice of a nation. 

Somalia is in some ways the most homogenous of sub-Saharan African
nations. Virtually all its people speak the same Somali language,
practice the Islamic faith and share a common ethnic background. 

But the people are divided among six major clans, which themselves
divide into 22 major sub-clans. The sub-clans are further fivided into
innumerable sub-sub clans. 

All these groups trace their kinship through genealogy. 

The sheer effort to survive has always been the glue holding a clan
together. Some clans have been more successful than others. Almost all
Somalis belong to a clan, ranging from the starving huddled at rural
food stations to people in cities and towns who have maintained an
adequate standard of living. 

Some clans embrace almost everyone in one region, while others,
especially in cities, specialize in specific industries or trades. 

Seifulaziz Milas, a Mozambican anthropologiQt and U.N. consultant,
described the makeup and values of Somali society this way in a tract
written for the world body: 

"The values of Somali society are those of survivors, of survivors in a
pastoral nomadic society struggling for life in a harsh desert setting
where the cost of a mistake, the price of a weakness, was often death." 

Clan feuds over water and grazing lands were passed down the
generations, he notes. 

"The extended family defends its interests against other members of the
sub-clan, while the elders of the sub-clan try to negotiate any disputes
because of the leed for the sub-clan to stand together against other
sub-clans to defend its common interests," Milas writes. 

"Sub-clans, in turn, may fight among themselves, but present a commmon
front against other clans to defend their interests." 

Mohamed Siad Barre, the dictator who ruled Somalia from 1969 until he
was deposed by rebels in January 1991, managed to hang onto power for so
long by playing the clans off against each other. 

Siad Barre belonged to the Marehan sub-clan of the Darod clan. 

While keeping the other major clans and sub-clans occupied with real or
invented rivalries, he enriched his relatives by giving them virtually
every major government post. 

There was a lot to go around, because his socialistic government owned
all major industries and businesses. 

Finally, in the early 1980s, the Isaaq clan that dominates the north of
Somalia and had long felt discriminated against by Siad Barre, rose up
in revolt. Other clans later joined in, but seldom in unison. 

While they all hated Siad Barre, they mistrusted each other. 

One of the last clans to turn on Siad Barre was the Hawiye, but its
United Somali Congress militia drove him from Mogadishu nearly two years
ago. 

Almost immediately, two Hawiye sub-clans, the Abgals headed by wealthy
businessman Ali Mahdi Mohamed and the Habar-Gedirs led by one of Siad
Barre's former generals, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, began quarreling over the
spoils. 

Their power struggle erupted into a major battle for control of
Mogadishu that lasted from November 1991 to last March, when it ended in
a U.N.-brokered cease-fire. 

The fighting left more than 30,000 people, mostly women and children,
dead or wounded and allowed the country to be carved up into a
collection of clan fiefdoms in the absence of a central government. 

It also aggravated the impact of a severe regional drought, leading to
the famine that already has killed more than 300,000 people and has put
up to 2 million more at risk of starvation. 

<<>>RTw  12/10 1356  SOMALI DEATH RATE AMONG HIGHEST EVER KNOWN

By Jerry Schwartz 

ATLANTA, Georgia, Dec 10, Reuter - Death rates in Somalia currently are
among the highest ever recorded for a starving population and may be
getting worse even as American forces land there, a U.S. health agency
said on Thursday.

Deaths among children under the age of five in one Somali village
reached a rate of 69.4 per day for every 10,000 children -- more than
three times higher than the rate in the 1984-85 Ethiopian famine, the
Centres for Disease Control (CDC) said. 

The agency emphasised its report was based only on scattered data from
two Somali villages accessible to medical workers. Even in one of those
villages, the survey had to be cut short by concerns for the security of
the survey team. 

Nevertheless, the CDC said its surveys "suggest that health conditions
are considerably worse in Somalia that they were during peak mortality
periods of the 1984-85 famine in Ethiopia and Sudan. The crude mortality
rates reported in these villages in Somalia are among the highest ever
documented by a population survey among famine-affected civilians." 

CDC survey teams randomly surveyed families in two villages, Baidoa and
Afgoi -- both located in the so-called "triangle of death" in Somalia.
Workers entered huts and asked Somalis how many people in their families
had died since the Moslem feast of Ramadan in early April. 

In Baidoa, the CDC discovered that 39 per cent of the people who were
alive on April 3 had died by November 21. The CDC also attempted to
measure crude death rates by counting bodies collected for burial each
day by truck. By that measure, 12,255 bodies were counted between August
9 and November 14. 

Moreover, it appeared that the death rates may be getting worse.
According to the reports of the Somali families, the death rate in
Baidoa had accelerated from about 17.2 per day for every 10,000 during
the period from April to October to a rate of 23.4 per day for every
10,000 people from November through last weekend. 

In Afgoi, the rate had increased from 5.6 deaths per day for every
10,000 people to 6.3 deaths per day over the same periods. 

REUTER JS ZM SJ  <<>>RTw  12/10 1340  U.N. CHIEF TO MEET SOMALI LEADERS IN ETHIOPIA JAN 4

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 10, Reuter - Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
will preside over an informal meeting of Somali leaders in Addis Ababa
on January 4 to make preparations for a national reconciliation
conference, a U.N. spokesman said on Thursday. 

The two main Somali leaders, Mohamed Farah Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohamed,
were told on Thursday by the U.N. special representative in Somalia,
Ismat Kittani, that the secretary-general would send them invitations to
the gathering within the next couple of days. 

Aideed and Ali Mahdi are scheduled to meet on Friday at the U.S. embassy
in Mogadishu and again on Saturday aboard a French naval ship off the
coast. 

The U.N. spokesman said the list of participants was not yet final but
would include at least representatives of nine political movements
invited to a meeting in the Ethiopian capital earlier this month
attended by clan leaders and aid agency officials. 

"The purpose of this meeting is to make preparations for a national
reconciliation conference under the auspices of the United Nations," he
said. 

Somalia has been without a recognised government since the overthrow in
January 1991 of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. The country then fell into
anarchy, exacerbated by famine, as rival warlords began fighting among
themselves. 

Kittani, who had separate meetings on Thursday with Aideed and Ali
Mahdi, was also instructed by Boutros-Ghali to inform them that the U.N.
Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) remained fully responsible for political
and humanitarian assistance. The United States-led task force which
began arriving on Wednesday was in charge of securing the delivery of
humanitarian assistance. 

REUTER AG  <<>>APn  12/10 1228  Somalian Niece

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

SEATTLE (AP) -- A Somalian immigrant recognized a little girl
photographed sleeping on the ground outside a Somalian hospital as his
niece, and is getting help finding her from the Red Cross, his
congressman and a newspaper. 

The photograph appeared Monday on the front page of The Seattle
Post-Intelligencer. The caption identified her as 5-year-old Easha
Shegow. 

Ali Scego, who owns a delicatessen in Seattle, said Shegow is the
Somalian spelling of his family's name, which his brother uses. 

The caption described Easha as an orphan. Scego said his niece, the
daughter of his brother, Omar, has two brothers and a sister. 

"I don't know (if) they are dead," Scego said. 

The American Red Cross in Seattle has contacted the International Red
Cross on the girl's behalf, said spokeswoman Hope Tuttle. 

U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott's office is contacting the Immigration and
Naturalization Service about the case. 

The photograph was taken by the Edmonton Sun and transmitted by The
Associated Press. Editors at the Sun said it was taken Sunday at
Keysaney Hospital, north of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital. 

The name of the hospital was given to the Red Cross in Seattle to be
forwarded to Red Cross workers in Somalia. 

Scego has been in the United States for 10 years and graduated from the
University of Maryland before coming to Seattle last summer. He has
acted as a spokesman for the Somalian community here. 

He said he would like to help his family come to the United States, and
hopes to visit Somalia at the end of the month. 

He had 12 brothers and sisters and his mother in Somalia before the
civil war and famine. He doesn't know how many are still alive. 

<<>>RTw  12/10 1134  SAUDI ARABIA TO SEND TROOPS TO SOMALIA

DUBAI, Dec 10, Reuter - Saudi Arabia said on Thursday it was sending
troops to join a U.S.-led force moving into Somalia to provide security
for famine relief aid. 

The Saudi Press Agency said that King Fahd issued orders to the armed
forces to send a Saudi force "to take part in this humanitarian effort."


It did not say how many troops would be sent to Somalia. 

Another Gulf Arab country, the United Arab Emirates, said last week it
was contributing troops to the force in Somalia. 

REUTER DYA DJG  <<>>RTw  12/10 1027  U.N. HUNGER CONFERENCE PROMOTES BREASTFEEDING

ROME, Dec 10, Reuter - An international nutrition conference to end
world hunger on Thursday promoted breastfeeding, particularly in
developing countries, to improve children's health. 

The conference, sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the
United Nations, recommended that infants be breastfed for the first six
months, with no other food or drink. 

"All women should have the opportunity to breastfeed their babies
exclusively for four to six months and, while giving appropriate
supplementary food, continue breastfeeding for up to two years and
beyond," a draft conference paper states. 

Advocates argue that an exclusive diet of breast milk contains the
needed nutrients and stops babies from getting sick from contaminated
water or food. It also prevents diarrhea, a leading cause of death among
infants in developing countries. 

Breastfeeding was also presented to the six-day conference which ends on
Friday as a natural means of birth control because it delays the return
of the reproductive cycle after pregnancy. 

REUTER VH PAR  <<>>RTw  12/10 0907  ITALY, SHAMED BY PAST, PREPARES TROOPS FOR SOMALIA

By Yann Tessier 

ROME, Dec 10, Reuter - Italy, embarrassed by its past support for Somali
dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, on Thursday prepared to send more than
2,000 troops to its former colony. 

Parliament was expected to approve the dispatch of paratroops and a
warship later on Thursday to join the U.S.-led force which landed this
week to save Somalia's starving population from gunmen who plunder
famine relief supplies. 

Defence Minister Salvo Ando said he expected them to leave as early as
Thursday evening. 

But Italian newspapers said the mission was aimed only at whitewashing
Rome's past involvement in Somalia. 

Italy ruled southern Somalia for half a century and has long felt a
historic responsibility for the territory it administered under United
Nations mandate until independence in 1960. 

Italian advisers stayed as army consultants until 1964 and Rome retained
close commercial links with the now discredited government of Mohamed
Siad Barre. 

Huge infusions of Italian aid poured into the country and Italian
companies enjoyed special privileges. 

"We should be ashamed of our business-oriented democracy,"
L'Indipendente newspaper said. 

Newspapers portrayed Italy's intervention as a personal defeat for
Bettino Craxi, Socialist prime minister from 1983 to 1987 and the first
western leader to visit Somalia, despite widespread protests over human
rights abuses. 

Taunting the Socialists over their past role, La Repubblica ran a front
page cartoon of Craxi holding an emaciated African child, which was
urinating in his eye. 

"We only had one policy: that of Siad Barre the dictator," said the
hardline Communist daily Il Manifesto. 

L'Indipendente added: "With eager hands, the Socialist party fed the
ferocious Somali dictator, responsible for the tribal massacres." 

Siad Barre fled into exile in April from the country he ruled with an
iron fist for 22 years. Much of the violence which followed his downfall
has been blamed on his ruthless exploitation of complex clan differences
to remain at the top. 

In parliament, Defence Minister Salvo Ando and Foreign Minister Emilio
Colombo also urged members to send up to 1,200 troops to Mozambique as
part of a 7,500-strong U.N force to police a peace accord brokered by
Rome this year, ending 16 years of civil war after independence from
Portugal. 

"The soldiers are ready to go as soon as we get the green light from the
legislature," Ando told parliamentarians. 

Both movements would be completed in the next two weeks and all troops
would be on site early in January, Ando said. 

"The aim in Somalia is the gradual reconstruction of the state,
beginning with internal security," Colombo told a sparsely-populated
Chamber of Deputies, the lower house. 

Colombo said the major warring factions in Somalia had told Italian
officials that Rome's troops would be welcome. 

Robert Oakley, the United States amassador in the Somali capital of
Mogadishu, criticised Italy's support of the government of Siad Barre. 

"It would be better if Italian troops came during a second phase, that
of reconstruction," he told Italian television late on Wednesday. 

REUTER YT SGA ASB  <<>>RTw  12/10 0837  PHILIPPINE ECONOMY IN ``MAKE-OR-BREAK'' SITUATION

By Rene Pastor 

MANILA, Dec 10, Reuter - The Philippine economy is in a make-or-break
position, Finance Secretary Ramon del Rosario said on Thursday, vowing
to pursue measures to open the economy up and stabilise the foreign
exchange market. 

The Philippines has fallen sharply behind its economically booming
neighbours in southeast Asia. Economic growth, which was flat last year,
may not even reach 1.0 per cent for all of 1992. 

"In stark terms, it is a make-or-break situation for all of us," del
Rosario said in a speech at groundbreaking ceremonies for a new Citibank
N.A. building in Manila. 

"Our challenge today is to get out of a development strategy that lost
steam two decades ago. I refer to the inward looking, protectionist,
statist economic policies which have proven to be unreliable in creating
jobs and dispersing wealth throughout the population." 

Crippling power outages lasting as long as six hours and infrastructure
bottlenecks has dampened prospects for economic growth in the
Philippines, officials said. 

The government said it hopes to put an end to the power cuts by
September 1993 although economists and other private business groups
believe they may last until 1994. 

Del Rosario said the government will go ahead with measures designed to
open up the economy, pare inflation, limit volatility in interest rates,
and maintain stability in the foreign exchange market. 

The government will resist calls to place a cap on payments on the
Philippines' $29 billion foreign debt and other suggestions by
politicians for "short-term gains which cannot be sustained," he said. 

"We are deliberately avoiding the easy way out, of reflating the economy
too early before inflation expectations would have stabilised. We are
sticking to the fiscal and monetary targets designed to lay the basis
for sustainable growth later." 

Programmes to stretch out payments on the foreign debt, lure badly
needed foreign investment to the country, and remove protectionist
barriers in the industrial sector will take time, he said. 

"Admittedly, we have yet to see the first definitive positive signs that
the economic programme is succeeding in generating actual investments.
We are still in the phase of laying the ground work for the economic
take-off," del Rosario said. 

The country's gross national product (GNP) grew at 0.91 per cent in the
first nine months of this year against official forecasts it would
increase by nearly 2.0 per cent in the same period. 

REUTER RDP DT  <<>>WP   12/10  xxx Marines Patrols Search for Arms

Marines Act to Undercut Warlords;Patrols Search Aggressively for Arms;
Supply Plane Delivers Food at Secured Airport 

By William Claiborne 

Washington Post Staff Writer 

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 9 - U.S. Marines made a series of rapid
tactical moves here today aimed at undercutting Somalia's rival warlords
and disarming their often clan-based followers. 

The swift landing at the airport and seaport early this morning by
amphibious assault vehicles, hovercraft and helicopters positioned the
U.S. forces to spread out through the rest of the capital, securing key
intersections and high ground as well as the U.S. Embassy compound. 

By 11 a.m., hundreds of curious Somalis were pressing against a line of
Marines outside the main airport terminal, gazing expectantly at an
entirely empty airfield. "It was a lot worse before, sir, nearly out of
control," Lt. Mark Murphy reported to his company commander. 

As the Marines frenetically began assembling a military infrastructure
that is intended to restore order to Somalia and secure transport routes
for desperately needed food in some regions of the country, there were
signs that recovery is not an unattainable goal. 

The U.N. World Food Program landed a C-130 Hercules supply aircraft at
the international airport for the first time in six months. 

CARE announced that on Friday it will dispatch 10 truckloads of wheat
each to the north and south sectors of the divided city to demonstrate
the quickness with which relief supplies can be delivered to the
starving - absent looting and extortion, which often has come in the
form of wages for security provided by the warlords' militias. A
middleman partition committee also is being eliminated, reducing the
opportunities for looting. 

Aside from the weapons carried by the Marines, there was a striking
reduction in the number of guns on display in the city - both personal
weapons and the heavy machineguns and recoilless rifles that once were
so prevalent on the roofs of Land Cruisers used by self-styled security
guards, called "technicals." 

There was also a continued strengthening of the Somali shilling against
the U.S. dollar, which exchanged at 6,000 two days ago and 3,200 today.
Some observers said the fluctuation reflected increased confidence of
the city's five powerful "cash facilitators," or money-changers, who
effectively have been acting as the central bank in fixing rates. 

But the feeble signs of recovery were overshadowed by the sights and
sounds of military preparation as convoys of armored vehicles and troop
transport trucks rolled through the streets. Sounds of gunfire
reverberated periodically and patrol helicopters flew low overhead,
surveying transport routes to be used by the U.S. forces. 

United Nations officials said an employee was shot and wounded in one
sniping incident, while other shots rang out around the U.N. compound
near the airport. 

Many Somalis have disdained the U.N. force because of its
ineffectiveness in thwarting the warlords and assuring safe supply of
food for famine victims. 

The aggressiveness of the Marines in disarming gunmen openly displaying
weapons was demonstrated in a patrol on the grounds of the destroyed
Somalia National University. 

Three men, one carrying an assault rifle, encountered the Marines on the
campus and were immediately forced to the ground and handcuffed - in the
same manner as 15 alleged gunmen in the initial stages of the landing
early today. 

Shots rang out in the distance as young Marines under Sgt. Brian
Bateman, all appearing nervous, stood over the prisoners and motioned
away civilian passersby. 

At one stage of the patrol, two Cobra attack helicopters were summoned
to hover at tree-top level while the Marines stormed an apparently
vacant house, kicked down a door and chased one man on foot until he
escaped. A group of Somali women passing by started laughing. 

The incident was triggered by one Marine's belief that a man standing on
a roof about 1,000 yards distant was carrying a rifle. When asked what
had made him think he had seen a sniper, the Marine replied, "A guy
stuck his head out of a window. Anyone who sticks his head out of a
window with armed soldiers around is bound to be a sniper." 

The Marine encampment at the airport showed few signs of expansion, and
for most of the day there was relatively little construction activity as
many of the landing force rested and prepared temporary quarters. 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>WP 12/09 xx AMA Panel Warns About Abortion Curbs

By Malcolm Gladwell 

Washington Post Staff Writer 

A panel of the American Medical Association yesterday warned that any
attempt to restrict the availability of abortion could have serious
consequences for the health of women. 

In a report published in today's issue of the AMA's weekly journal, the
group's Council on Scientific Affairs said that the risk of death from
induced abortion has declined to the lowest level in history, owing in
large part to improved physician skills, better medical technology and
the fact that fetuses are being aborted earlier, which makes the
procedure safer and easier. 

The group also cautioned that any attempt to restrict or delay abortions
could reverse this trend. 

"Mandatory waiting periods, parental or spousal consent and notification
statutes, a reduction in the number and geographic availability of
abortion providers, and a reduction in the number of physicians who are
trained and willing to perform first- and second-trimester abortions
increase the gestational age at which the induced pregnancy termination
occurs, thereby increasing the risk associated with the procedure," the
report concluded. 

The report said the health impact of such curbs would probably fall most
heavily on low-income women. 

The council obtained its long-term mortality data from the National
Center for Health Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, and the Alan Guttmacher Institute, among other sources. 

According to the report, the death rate from legal abortions in the
United States in 1985 was about 0.4 per 100,000 procedures, down from
3.3 per 100,000 in 1973, the year of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade
decision. Prior to that, death rate associated with abortion was much
higher, the report said, although precise figures are lacking. Largely
because of the lack of availability of antibiotics, it is estimated that
over 1,407 women died from legal abortions in 1940, compared with six in
1985. 

If any changes in abortion law result in some women who would have had
an abortion carrying the fetus to term, the report said, it would raise
the mortality rate for women because childbirth is much more dangerous
than abortion. In 1985, approximately nine women out of every 100,000
died during childbirth, a mortality rate more than 10 times as high as
the abortion death rate. 

The report also said that legal changes that delay the termination of
pregnancy increased risks to the health of the mother. After Minnesota
enacted mandatory parental consent laws in 1981, for example,
second-trimester abortions - which are more dangerous to the mother than
first-trimester abortions - increased by 12 percent and abortion
procedures were delayed one to thress weeks, the authors noted.
Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>APn  12/10 0040  Somalia-Home Front Hunger

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By NANCY NUSSBAUM 

Associated Press Writer 

GASSAWAY, W.Va. (AP) -- As U.S. troops landed in Somalia to help feed
the jungry, Patti Carr, unemployed in America's Appalachians, didn't
know where her next meal would come from. 

"I think it's wonderful that we put our effort into helping the people
in Somalia, but I also wish they'd put half as much effort into helping
people at home," she said Wednesday as she turned to the United
Christian Food Pantry for free food. 

Carr, 41, lost her job as an office manager when a family business
folded two years ago. She said a delay in her month's supply of food
stamps left her with little to live on. 

"I don't have milk and bread and the things that I would need," she
said. 

Carr has not been able to find a job, but neither have many people in
Braxton County, about 50 miles northeast of Charleston. Unemployment
here was 14.6 percent in October, above even West Virginia's statewide
rate of 10.1 percent, which was the nation's highest. 

In November, the United Christian Food Pantry, supported by area
churches, fed 83 hungry people in 24 families. 

"We do have people starving in the United States, but not as bad as
Somalia," said Stella Bright, a volunteer at the food bank. 

Arlene Currence, director of Mountain Cap Community Action, whkch
oversees another food bank in nearby Sutton, agreed. She said her food
bank served more than 100 families about two years ago, but government
cutbacks have reduced the number to 50 families and they have to turn
some hungry families away. 

"People around here need jobs. The government could do that," said
Darlene Shields, 37, a mother of two who worked as a nurse's aide before
she got hurt on the job two years ago. 

"There's a lot of people here in need that's not getting help," she
said. 

Shields, who spent much of Wednesday seeking help at county offices,
said she cannot qualify for food stamps because she may be getting
workers compensation. 

She lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her two children and her
niece's family of five. Rent is $250 a month and her only income is $200
a month in child support. Her family helps. 

"Evidently Somalia needs help; so do we," she said. "The government is
supposed to help people in need and, in my case, I didn't get any help."


Carr said the government should work toward getting Americans back to
work, improving health care and providing for the homeless. 

"If we're investing millions of dollars in other countries, we should be
able to do that in our own country," she said. 

<<>>APn  12/09 2120  Sudan-Somalia

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) -- A senior U.S. envoy said Wednesday he would seek
to explain the U.S. intervention in Somalia to the Sudanese, whose
leader recently criticized the American mission. 

Herman Cohen, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said in
a statement upon arriving in Sudan, which also faces a famine, that he
would explain that the mission had no political motives. 

Cohen then drove to a meeting with Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali
Sahloul. He will also meet with Parliaient Speaker Mohamad al-Amin
Khalifa before he departs Wednesday night. 

Last Wednesday, Sudan's military strongman Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan
el-Bashir said the plan to deploy U.S. troops in Somalia would
"aggravate instability and hamper peace efforts in the region." 

He forced most private aid agencies to withdraw from southern Sudan this
year, although as many as 1 million Sudanese are threatened with
starvation. 

Since el-Bashir took power in a 1989 military coup, relations with the
United States have been strained because of rights violations and the
country's support of Iraq during the Gtlf War. 

In Geneva, meanwhile, the deputy head of the U.N.'s humanitarian affairs
department said that fighting among rebels in southern Sudan recently
had forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, often to
"absolutely horrendous" areas with no water. 

"It has not got the visibility of what we see in Somalia, but there are
pockets of utter famine and starvation," Charles Lamuniere told
reporters on his return from Sudan. 

The fighting and famine in Sudan has claimed hundreds of thousands of
lives and displaced more than 6 million of Suden's estimated 2million
people from their homes. 

Lamuniere said the Khartoum government had indicated last week it would
readmit aid agencies for certain projects. Further talks are to be held
in January. 

But he said he feared an expected government offensive could lead to
displacement of more war-weary civilians on a massive scale. 

The war started nine years ago and has intensified in the past three
years with operations against rebel forces in the Christian and animist
south. 

Most international aid reaching southern Sudan is supplied by air. It is
a complicated and costly operatioo and all flights have to be given
advance permission. 

Under last week's agreement, the warring factions pledged to allow
easier air access. This should allow the United Nations to fly to
previously inaccessible areas to assess the plight of civilians. 

Cohen was also to visit Eritrea, Ethiopia and Kenya, countries bordering
Somalia this week. 

<<>>RTw  12/09 1952  CUBA SAYS U.S. ROLE IN SOMALIA SHOULD BE LIMITED

HAVANA, Dec 9, Reuter - Cuban Foreign Minister Ricardo Alarcon said on
Wednesday the U.S. military operation in Somalia to protect famine
relief supplies should be strictly limited to its humanitarian
objectives. 

"I think it's important that the operation stop there and that the
humanitarian concerns are not manipulated for other political purposes,"
Alarcon told Reuters. 

Cuba's communist government has frequently accused the United States of
trying to act as a world policeman following the breakup of its former
superpower rival, the ex-Soviet Union. 

Havana has also been a strong critic of past U.S. military
interventions, such as the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama. 

Alarcon said that while the situation in Somalia was of "great
humanitarian concern," the intervention of a U.S.-led, U.N.-approved
multinational famine relief police force "should not be construed as a
precedent of any kind." 

"The (U.N.) Security Council is not the body entitled to deal with
humanitarian concerns although we are not going to oppose or object to
this effort to help the Somalis, which is a universal concern," he
added. 

Cuba, which has no diplomatic relations with Washington, has often in
the past accused the U.S. of trying to influence and manipulate the
United Nations to serve its own strategic objectives. 

Alarcon described the situation in Somalia as "a very special case." 

REUTER PF SR RAA  APn  12/08 1816  Somalia-Mission

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By DONALD M. ROTHBERG 

AP Diplomatic Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. forces are entering Somalia to stabilize a
country with no government, devastated by starvation with armed bands
blocking food deliveries. Even if the Americans succeed, will the
African nation slip back into anarchy when they leave? 

In one sense the U.S. mission is limited: Use a show of overwhelming
force to enable relief workers to do their job without interference from
the rival gangs.

But left unclear are the answers to longer-term questions. 

Will the U.S. forces inevitably have to take the guns away from the
warlords and their followers? And would that change the nature of the
U.S. mission and extend it well beyond what anyone now is contemplating?


Can the Americans leave before there is some semblance of authority in
place? Is there any hope of seeing a national government in Somalia
soon. 

With all the uncertainty, one prediction seems sure: While President
Bush dispatched the U.S. troops, it will fall to President Clinton to
decide when they come home. 

"We'll just have to stop the roving gangs and take their guns," said
Rep. Mervyn Dymally, D-Calif., chairman of the House African affairs
subcommittee. "We're just going to have to be a little more than just
police, I'm afraid." 

Rep. Howard Wolpe, D-Mich., another subcommitte member, said that unless
progress is made toward a political settlement "all the guns that are
around Mogadishu and buried underground will come back out." 

Wolpe said the presence of U.S. troops might give "some breathing room"
to negotiations under way in Ethiopia between Somali factions. He said
that "unless there is some success in the negotiations, you will see a
repitition of the horror." 

At a news conference at the Capitol on Tuesday, Clinton suggested he'd
like to define the U.S. mission narrowly -- establishment of secure
supply lines. 

But the president-elect also sounded skeptical of talk that the U.S.
forces could withdraw by mid-January. 

"An artificial timetable cannot be imposed upon it," he said, though he
added that he respected Bush's desire to have the troops home by that
time. 

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney also has used the phrase "artificial
deadline" when brushing aside White House predictions the U.S. forces
would be out before Jan. 20, when Clinton takes office. The duration of
the U.S. mission will not be determined by "political events at home,"
said Cheney. 

Rep. Dave McCurdy, D-Okla., chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee, said the United States ought to be working now planning the
transfer of authority to a U.N. peace keeping force. 

"You have a trauma patient," McCurdy said of Somalia. "You stabilize him
and then hand him over to the experts." 

How bad off is the patient? 

At least 300,000 Somalis have died of famine caused by war and drought,
and 2 million are at risk. 

"We're going into a very crude infrastructure, and what infrastructure
there is has been dilapidated, destroyed," said Col. Charlie Coolidge,
vice commander of the Air Force's control center for airlift operations
to Somalia. 

A positive sign: U.S. special envoy Robert Oakley said the price of guns
had dropped sharply in Mogadishu. "People feel they aren't going to use
their weapons and are getting rid of them," he said. But he added that
there were still plenty of guns around. 

The prospects for long-term stability seem uncertain at best. 

"It's premature to think about national discussions," said David R.
Smock, an Africa scholar at the U.S. Institute for Peace. 

Smock recently coordinated a discussion of the African nation's problems
by a group of Somali exiles of differing political views. He said the
consensus was that building a government in Somalia would be "a slow
process," starting with consensus in local and then regional areas and
only gradually reaching national direction. 

------ 

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Donald M. Rothberg covers diplomatic affairs for the
Associated Press. 

<<>>WP  12/06 xxx Intervention; A Tragedy `We Could Do Something About' 

By Don Oberdorfer 

Washington Post Staff Writer 

The crown princes of the Bush administration were gathered in the White
House Situation Room two weeks ago to discuss the crisis in Somalia when
Adm. David Jeremiah, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
announced to general surprise that deployment of U.S. ground troops
could end the violence in Somalia and see that its people were fed
within a short period. 

The Nov. 21 meeting of the Deputies Committee, a National Security
Council panel of officials just below the Cabinet level, was the turning
point in the deliberations that led to President Bush's order Friday to 
send thousands of American troops to Somalia, participants in the
discussions say. 

Until the statement of Jeremiah - the deputy and alter ego of JCS
Chairman Gen. Colin L. Powell - the widespread assumption had been that
the U.S. military would resist extensive involvement in that far-off
African land. It had resisted involvement in a less costly and less
dangerous relief airlift to Somalia last summer, and continues
vigorously to oppose involvement in the bloody ethnic battles in Bosnia.


As the United States feels its way toward new international roles in the
post-Cold War world, the deliberations and decisions of the past several
weeks may have more than fleeting significance. Unlike previous
large-scale military operations, there is no U.S. strategic or economic
interest in the Somalia deployments, as the NSC deputies agreed at the
very start of their discussions. 

The U.S. action in Somalia, which has startled many Americans, responds
to a different set of priorities, including a growing belief in this
country that only the United States is equipped to lead efforts to deal
with some international crises and disasters. As Bosnia and many other
conflicts testify, however, U.S. policymakers are not prepared to
intervene in every such crisis. 

Two important criteria for the administration in Somalia were the scale
of the disaster and the likely effectiveness of U.S. intervention. "This
is a tragedy of massive proportions," said acting Secretary of State
Lawrence S. Eagleburger, "and, underline this, one that we could do
something about. We had to act." 



The most persuasive argument in favor of action during the weeks of
internal discussions of Somalia, said a senior White House participant,
was that "it's a need where the need is crying and where only the United
States can do something." A senior Defense official said that he was not
surprised by Bush's decision. "I had the feeling that no matter what was
said (by his advisers), he would not want to leave office with 50,000
people starving that he could have saved." 

The contrary view, expressed in colorful language in a diplomatic cable
from U.S. Ambassaor to Kenya Smith Hempstone made public this weekend by
U.S. News and World Report, was that "if you liked Beirut," where U.S.
Marines in the early 1980s fought a losing battle against local
terrorists, "you'll love Mogadishu." Hempstone predicted "it will take
five years to get Somalia not on its feet but just on its knees." In the
absence of fundamental change, he said, U.S. intervention will only
"keep tens of thousands of Somali kids from starving to death in 1993
who, in all probability, will starve to death in 1994." 

Hempstone called Somalia a "tarbaby," a term that was heard from U.S.
military representatives before the military view changed a few days
before Bush's decision. Admirals and generals around the interagency
conference table also had spoken of Somalia as "a quagmire," said a
civilian official who favored U.S. intervention. 

The Somali crisis was touched off by the ouster of the country's
longtime dictator, President Mohamed Siad Barre, in January 1991. By
early this year, the collapse of all governmental authority combined
with drought, the continuation of traditional clan and sub-clan warfare
and growing chaos had led to mass starvation, and made Somalia "the most
acute humanitarian tragedy in the world today," said Andrew Natsios, the
overseas relief chief of the Agency for International Development (AID).


The United States has been in the forefront of supplying food aid
through the International Committee of the Red Cross and private
voluntary relief organizations. By this summer, however, the local
distribution channels for food shipments were increasingly blocked by
clan violence. To get around this problem, administration officials
began discussing a U.S. airlift, especially to the interior of the
country that was cut off from the relief supplies. 

Pentagon representatives were reluctant even to consider an airlift when
an interagency committee discussed it in early August. Along with some
in the State Department worried about the escalating costs of U.N.
peace-keeping operations, the Joint Chiefs of Staff considered Somalia
"a bottomless pit" for U.S. involvement, according to a participant in
the meetings. 

But Bush - whose attention had been attracted by an earlier Hempstone
cable, entitled "A Day in Hell," about a trip to Somalia - decided at an
Aug. 12 meeting with senior advisers to order the airlift anyway. The
emergency food airlift was announced two days later, on the Friday night
before the Republican National Convention. 

This dramatic display of U.S. determination turned out to be only a
palliative. After the food began showing up in large quantities in the
Somali capital of Mogadishu and regional centers, clan groups and armed
gangs of freelance thugs demanded and took a growing share through
negotiations for "protection" or outright raids. 

Attacks on relief workers escalated. Some airports had to be closed and
relief operations temporarily abandoned. A contingent of 500 lightly
armed Pakistani troops, sent by the U.N. Security Council to guard the
food supplies and airlifted to Mogadishu in September by U.S. planes,
was isolated in corner of the capital's airport by clan warriors. 

Key seaports were closed after quarreling clans fired on relief vessels.
Warlords refused to approve a U.N. request that 3,000 more troops be
sent to safeguard relief supplies. Increasingly, lack of security was
more of a problem than lack of food. 

U.S. foreign policymaking had gone into low gear during the presidential
campaign, but after the election, pressure grew on several fronts for
more dramatic action in Somalia. 

On Nov. 12, Assistant Secretary of State Robert L. Gallucci, the
department's chief of politico-military affairs, recommended in a
written paper and an oral appeal to Eagleburger that the United States
lead a coalition to save Somalia from starvation under a  U.N. Security
Council authorization to use "all necessary means," including armed
forces. Eagleburger, convinced by Gallucci's arguments, became an
advocate of more forceful U.S. action. 

On Nov. 16, senior representatives of U.S. relief organizations working
in Somalia met with U.N. officials in New York and appealed for more
protection. The next day  11 relief groups began drafting a joint letter
to the Bush administration calling for expansion of the U.N. force and
U.N. mandate and declaring that "humanitarian agencies cannot work
effectively in Somalia without greater security." About the same time a
Senate delegation headed by Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) and a House
delegation under Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) were calling for more security
after visits to Somalia. 

The first of four NSC Deputies Committee meetings leading to Bush's
decision to send U.S. ground troops convened at the White House on
Friday, Nov. 20 under unprecedented public scrutiny. Such meetings are
normally secret, but news of this one was revealed the day before by
columnist Leslie Gelb on the New York Times op-ed page and by Robert
MacNeil on the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, which had been giving
persistent and extensive coverage to the Somalian tragedy for months. 

Both those reports, and another New York Times op-ed column the morning
of the meeting by Anthony Lewis, favorably cited recommendations for
U.S. military action by Frederick C. Cuny, a humanitarian relief expert
who was an AID consultant in Somalia as he had been in Operation Provide
Comfort, the U.S. military relief for the Kurds in northern Iraq. 

Cuny, who briefed State and Defense Department officials shortly before
the Nov. 20 meeting, advocated using 2,500 U.S. troops with air and
naval support to open and improve supply lines. At the time, this was
considered a very bold proposal. 

In the first day of interagency discussions, Undersecretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz hinted at the possibility of using U.S. ground troops,
but the general representing the Joint Chiefs, the uniformed military,
said little. Earlier in the week, U.N. Secretary General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali had appealed for more U.S. help in a conversation with
Undersecretary of State Frank Wisner but had not requested U.S. troops.
In view of that conversation, many around the table thought that the
introduction of American troops was unlikely to be seriously considered.


On Nov. 21, the second day of discussions, Jeremiah, who coordinates
with JCS Chairman Powell daily, startled the group by saying that "if
you think U.S. forces are needed" on land in Somalia, "we can do the
job," one participant said. Although he also expressed concern about the
circumstances under which U.S. forces could withdraw, Jeremiah's
statement transformed the use of U.S. ground troops - an option that
previously had been considered "fantasy land" by nonmilitary
policymakers - into a leading possibility. 

What brought the shift in Pentagon thinking is a matter of speculation
within the administration. An official close to Powell, who declined to
be interviewed for this article, said "mounting evidence" of the
dimensions of the tragedy in Somalia, some of it validated by U.S.
military officials on the ground, convinced the Joint Chiefs that
something substantial should be done. Another official familiar with the
thinking of Powell and Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney said they
were willing to "do more than put a Band-Aid on the problem" because the
situation in Somalia is so stark and "what we do can make a big
difference." 

A senior State Department official said "there was never any doubt in
anybody's mind that if you really wanted to be absolutely certain to
deliver the goods on time, you go with the U.S. military." The question
being asked, he added, was whether the Joint Chiefs would agree to
intervene "in an obscure African situation loaded with uncertainty and
full of chaos." The military "came forward" after deciding it was a
workable mission, and he is not inclined to question an initiative that
surprised and delighted him, the official said. 

Presidential national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, who held several
discussions with Bush and often reflects his views, was among those in
the administration receptive to a major U.S. military initiative. Bush
had been told by Boutros-Ghali in a conversation at the White House last
May that Muslims were aroused by the U.N.'s failure to protect their
coreligionists in either Bosnia or Somalia. "Can't we do something about
Somalia?" the U.N. chief asked Bush plaintively. Senior officials at
both the White House and State Department said that their views had been
affected to some extent by the fact that Somalia is a Muslim country. 

Bush had discussed Somalia among other topics with President-elect
Clinton in their White House meeting Nov. 18, but indications from both
camps are that the president did not pose the issue of U.S. ground
troops. Powell briefed Clinton on Nov. 19, the eve of the first Deputies
Committee meeting, but it could not be learned if Somalia was discussed.
Administration officials said everyone was aware that decisions by the
Bush administration would have a major impact on the Clinton
administration. 

Two more Deputies Committee meetings were held at the White House on
Nov. 23 and 24 to refine options for consideration by Bush. Meanwhile,
Cheney and Powell were thinking harder about the dangers of U.S.
military intervention, especially after a briefing on the morning of
Nov. 24 by Brig. Gen. Frank Libutti, commander of the U.S. airlift
operations into Somalia. If the United States were not careful, he said,
its troops would be in Somalia for 10 or 15 years. A series of
high-level meetings at the Pentagon followed the Libutti briefing. 

When Bush met his senior advisers in the National Security Council on
the morning of Nov. 25, the day before Thanksgiving, he began by
declaring that "we want to do something about Somalia." He had three
options before him: increased support for existing U.N. efforts, a
U.S.-organized coalition effort without the participation of American
ground troops, or a major U.S. effort to lead a multinational force in
which U.S. ground troops took the leading role. 

Powell, a participant said, took no position on what should be done, but
he expressed concern about the use of U.S. ground troops. A source
familiar with his thinking said that Powell questioned whether
conditions in Somalia would permit the smooth handoff of military
responsibility to a U.N. peace-keeping force after a relatively brief
deployment. 

Taking responsibility for pointing out possible pitfalls, Powell
described "the down sides" of intervention. After what one participant
called "a broad discussion," Bush decided that if the U.N. Security
Council agreed, and other nations would join the effort, U.S. combat
troops would lead an international force to stop the starvation in
Somalia. 

Bush sent Eagleburger to New York that afternoon to broach the matter to
a surprised Boutros-Ghali. Within hours, to the dismay of administration
policymakers, the U.S. offer to send up to a division of American ground
troops became public. 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>APn  12/09 0200  Somalia-TV Coverage

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By LYNN ELBER 

AP Television Writer 

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Like a band of eager paparazzi, reporters and
television crews surrounded the first small band of U.S. forces to land
in Somalia. 

Wives of some Marines, watching at home, weren't pleased to see
spotlights on the troops. Neither was the military. 

But the image of Marines confronting the glare of TV lights rather than
rebels seemed oddly appropriate for a mission that many observers say
has been driven by TV images of Somalia's agony of hunger. 

"It's a full photo opportunity there," CNN correspondent Christiane
Amanpour observed several hours after Tuesday's landing, as a few
Somalis were shown being herded by Marines. 

"It really is a public display, almost Hollywood here," she said. 

The harsh illumination of the predawn landing drew criticism from
military officials, who said the lights could have put both troops and
reporters in danger. 

Reporters for CNN, which broadcast the first glimpse of the landing,
said they turned off their lights when asked. But they maintained the
Pentagon hadn't warned against using them. 

Viewers saw a stern-looking Marine Lt. Kirk Coker chiding the media.
"There may be some armed people who could cause harm to our guys," he
said, telling reporters to move back. 

Wives of Marines based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., worried that the media
throng could jeopardize troops. 

"My husband's life is more important than somebody's news story," said
Debbie Blackgrave, whose husband, Sgt. Wendell Blackgrave, was aboard
the USS Rushmore just off the Somali coast. 

"I thought it was kind of a circus," said Andrea Schneider, whose
husband, Capt. Glenn Schneider, was aboard the USS Tripoli. "I mean you
have all these guys trying to do their stealthy thing, and then you have
all these reporters saying, `Hi, what's your name. Where are you from?"'


NBC, CBS and CNN went live with coverage of the first troops arriving on
the beach at Mogadishu. Only CNN stayed with the story as the others
returned, for the most part, to regular programming. 

CBS broke into regular programming with a 4:21 p.m. EST announcement of
the landing, the first word on TV. 

CBS' first pictures of the scene were broadcast at 4:50 p.m., 10 minutes
after CNN showed live "night-scope" pictures of the moonlight landing of
six Navy frogmen. 

NBC was on the air with pictures of the landing at 4:51 p.m., while ABC
waited to begin its coverage at 6:30 p.m. EST with "World News Tonight."


"It was a news judgment. It was just decided not to do it," said ABC
News spokesman Arnot Walker. 

The network evening newscasts were anchored from Mogadishu by ABC's Ted
Koppel, CBS' Dan Rather and NBC's Tom Brokaw. 

The NBC newsmagazine show "Dateline NBC" was broadcast in advance of its
scheduled 10 p.m. EST slot and was given over entirely to Somalia, with
live and taped reports. 

ABC's late-night news show "Nightline" broadcast live from Mogadishu. 

<<>>RTw  12/09 0059  U.S. MARINES POUR INTO MOGADISHU

By Aidan Hartley 

MOGADISHU, Dec 9, Reuter - U.S. marines poured onto the beaches of
Mogadishu just before dawn on Wednesday, heralding the start of an
operation to save starving Somalis from gunmen who prey on famine relief
supplies. 

The heavily-armed Americans stormed out of landing craft in armoured
personnel carriers and light tanks and quickly secured the beachside
airport of the ruined capital. 

Cobra gunship helicopters clattered in from three warships lying
offshore and hovered above the sea wall of the port, headquarters of
some of the major rackets that have crippled relief work. 

Marines clambered over the sea wall and a few shots were fired but the
Americans suffered no casualties. 

"Four to five men with rifles came over and fired a couple of rounds
before running away," said Staff Sergeant Joseph Rossi of the 9th Marine
detachment. 

"I was kind of scared when we were on the other side of the compound
because of the firefight," said Lance Corporal Eric Chavez, a
19-year-old corporal from Aztec, New Mexico. 

It appeared to be an isolated case of resistance to the troops arrival,
the vanguard of a U.N. multinational force of some 37,000 men. 

At the airport, helicopters scouted for any sign of gangs of gunmen who
have brought the Horn of Africa country to its knees. 

Mogadishu's warlords had instructed their gunmen -- often teenagers high
on the narcotic leaf Qat -- to stay out of the two areas. 

The timing of the arrival of the force was publicised by U.S. Defence
Department officials and scores of journalists were waiting to record
the event, many on prime-time U.S. television. 

Barking orders, the marines arrested any unauthorised Somalis in the
area. 

About a dozen Somalis were marched out of an aircraft hangar where they
were living and made to lie spreadeagled on the ground. 

Two of them were then bound with plastic handcuffs. One of the
"prisoners" wriggled on the ground shouting anti-colonial slogans in
Italian. 

Brigadier-General Imtiaz Shaheen, commander of a small U.N. relief
protection force already in Mogadishu, quickly intervened with senior
U.S. officers to secure the men's release. 

Two Somalis squatted in front of a soldier holding a heavy machine-gun. 

"The only reason they are being detained is that we do not really know
who they are. It is for everyone's protection," said Captain Tim Miller.


Outside the airport gates, marines took up position and searched any car
leaving or entering the compound -- a momentous event that shocked and
delighted many Somalis who have lived under gun rule for months. 

"Sorry for the inconvenience. Have a nice day, sir," said one officer on
waving a car through. 

REUTER JMC DLT  <<>>UPn  12/09 0025  Salvadoran government dismantles infamous army unit

Salvadoran government dismantles army unit blamed for massacres 

By DANIEL ALDER 

SITIO DEL NINO, El Salvador (UPI) -- President Alfredo Cristiani has
formally demobilized an elite army unit blamed for two of the most
notorious massacres of the country's 12-year civil war, calling the
soldiers "heroes of the fatherland" as low-flying jets screamed overhead
in salute. 

The demobilization of the 1,261-strong Atlacatl Immediate Reaction
Battalion, considered the Salvadoran military's top combat unit by U.S.
military advisers who designed and trained the force, was being carried
out Tuesday as part of the country's peace process. 

The Atlacatl battalion is best remembered by Salvadorans for its alleged
involvement in the 1981 massacre of hundreds of civilians around the
village of El Mozote and the 1989 murders of six prominent Jesuit
priests in the capital. 

Cristiani, speaking at a parade ground ceremony to formally dissolve the
battalion, told the soldiers, "You will remain in the hearts of the
Salvadoran people as heros of the fatherland." His speech was twice
drowned out by the sound of low-flying military jets that screamed
overhead. 

Despite his remarks, other people were glad to see the military
battalion be demobilized. It was one of five such counter-insurgency
units being dissolved as part of the U.N.-mediated settlement of the
civil war. 

"The Atlacatl battalion was a symbol of the brutality of the war," said
Jose Maria Tojeira, head of the Jesuit order in Central America. "It has
committed crimes, it has killed and repressed civilians. It is fitting
that this battalion disappear." 

The peace accord signed last January includes broad reforms of the small
Central American nation's democratic institutions and a radical
restructuring of the armed forces. 

In exchange for these reforms, the leftist Farabundo Marti National
Liberation Front, or known by the Spanish-language acronym FMLN, agreed
to destroy its weapons and transform its armed insurgency into a
political party. 

The disarming of a final contigent of rebel forces is scheduled to be
completed by Dec. 15, marking a formal end to the conflict in which some
75,000 people -- more than 1 percent of the population -- were killed. 

Evidence is now mounting that the Atlacatl battalion systematically
massacred up to 1,000 men, women and children at the village of El
Mozote more than a decade ago. 

Salvadoran officials and foreign experts recently began investigating
the atrocity. An initial excavation of the village's small convent
uncovered the remains of at least 136 children, six women and one
elderly man. 

"There is abundant evidence that the cause of death, where it can be
discerned, is due to gunshot wounds," said Clyde Snow, a world renowned
forensic anthropologist from Texas. 

"Those kids didn't die in a measles epidemic," said Robert Kirschner, a
medical examiner from Cook County, Illinois, who has also worked on the
case. "They were murdered. This was a mass murder of children," 

The few surviving witnesses said members of the Atlacatl battalion
carried out the massacre during an operation directed against guerrillas
who had established a stronghold in the area. 

The Salvadoran government has always denied the massacre took place and
U.S. officials questioned the accuracy of news reports about the
incident at the time. 

Investigators expect the number of bodies discovered to rise as they
excavate other sites in El Mozote and four surrounding villages also
targeted by the army operation. 

The Atlacatl battalion's commando unit is also accused of murdering six
Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter in a night
raid on the priests' home in San Salvador in 1989. 

A colonel charged with ordering the mission and one lieutenant were
later convicted of murder based on testimony from members of the
commando unit who said they were sent to eliminate the priests and
ordered to leave no witnesses. 

Apart from the dismantling of counter-insurgency battalions, the armed
forces are also being stripped of police duties they exercised during
the war and having their troop numbers cut in half, to about 32, 000
members. 

Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>RTw  12/08 1841  U.S. DENIES SOMALIS ASYLUM AS MARINES LAND IN AFRICA

By Lyndsay Griffiths 

WASHINGTON, Dec 8, Reuter - The United States is denying asylum to
Somalis seeking to avoid civil war and famine back home even as U.S.
troops on Tuesday night began landing to restore law and order in the
Horn of Africa country. 

Hundreds of Somalis are seeking asylum but the Immigration and
Naturalisation Service says civil war and famine are not reason enough
to win refuge in the United States. 

"Although the situation in Somalia is worse than ever, there is now a
greater burden for asylum seekers to overcome," said Allan Ebert, an
immigration lawyer. 

"In the 1980s I got asylum all the time because every Somali seemed to
have a case of persecution, but lately it has grown more difficult
because you don't have individualised fear," said Ebert, who specialises
in Somali cases. 

The fear now is not individual persecution at the hands of dictator
Mohamed Siad Barre, ousted in January 1991, but terror for every Somali
-- all potential targets of clan violence or starvation in a country
with no government. 

Heavily armed U.S. Marines began landing on Tuesday night in Somalia,
the vanguard of 37,000 U.S. and other forces who will make sure food and
medicine are distributed across the East African country. 

Many of the asylum seekers in the United States have relatives trapped
in the clan fighting or refugee camps. 

"These people in the U.S. are absolutely traumatised about the prospect
of being sent to join them," said Ebert, adding that every successful
asylum seeker can offer support to about 10 people in Somalia. 

"But INS is taking too long to act on these cases and continues to
deport. Where, in their right mind, are they going to send these people?
Land them on an aircraft carrier? A Marine ship? It's not only stupid,
it's inhumane," he said. 

The INS, however, says it cannot offer Somalis special treatment just
because their nation is shredding at the seams. 

"Asylum policy for Somalis is the same as for anyone else: demonstrate a
well-founded fear of persecution and you can stay. The conditions (back
home) are a factor but they're not enough in themselves," said INS
spokesman Verne Jervis. 

As of September 30, 563 Somali asylum case were pending in the United
States, many dating to the 1980s. 

But Jervis said the backlog was due to "frivolous asylum seekers" and
denied the INS was to blame for thrusting legitimate cases into a
bureaucratic hole. 

Jervis said no Somalis had been sent home "in recent months" although
orders to leave have been issued. 

Mark Levey, a legal specialist in the political asylum process, said the
incoming administration of President-elect Bill Clinton could move away
from the lengthy and costly deportation process and make things easier
for Somalis seeking safety on U.S. soil. 

"There may be a new category of safe haven created for people who face
reasonable risk but don't qualify for asylum," he said. "It could apply
to Yugoslavia, Romania, Haiti, Somalia: situations in varying degrees of
danger. 

"Right now, large numbers of  Somalis face the threat of deportation
and, for the foreseeable future, their country will remain in absolute
chaos, with everyone a target and starvation a real possiblity," said
Levey. 

"INS is really quite frugal about granting asylum," he added. "But until
things drastically improve, the U.S. must come up with a formal
mechanism for these terrified people." 

REUTER LG JK JE  <<>>RTw  12/08 1742  BOUTROS-GHALI APPEALS TO SOMALIS TO COOPERATE

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 8, Reuter - Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
appealed to the people of Somalia on Tuesday to cooperate with the
United Nations as U.S. troops began landing in the starving country to
protect relief operations against armed gangs. 

"The unified military command which is arriving in Somalia under the
United Nations mandate comes to feed the starving, protect the
defenceless, and prepare the way for political, economic and social
reconstruction," he said. 

In a message of hope to be broadcast to the Somali people, he said the
people of the world had been deeply moved by the "unique and desperate
situation" in Somalia. 

"The world refuses to accept your suffering and death. An end to
hopelessness and despair is possible. 

"The United Nations is taking action in Somalia in the cause of
security, humanitarian relief, and political reconciliation. The United
Nations intends to restore the hope of the Somali people." 

The U.N. chief, who did not refer by name to the United States, which is
leading the operation, said the unified military command was arriving to
create areas of security and to feed the hungry. 

"As this effort continues, the United Nations will be working toward
long-term solutions for the problems of Somalia. We ask for the
cooperation of the Somali people in this vast undertaking. Together we
can restore peace to your suffering land," Boutros-Ghali concluded. 

REUTER AG GE  <<>>APn  12/08 1816  Somalia - Description of the Mission

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By DONALD M. ROTHBERG 

AP Diplomatic Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. forces are entering Somalia to stabilize a
country with no government, devastated by starvation with armed bands
blocking food deliveries. Even if the Americans succeed, will the
African nation slip back into anarchy when they leave? 

In one sense the U.S. mission is limited: Use a show of overwhelming
force to enable relief workers to do their job without interference from
the rival gangs.

But left unclear are the answers to longer-term questions. 

Will the U.S. forces inevitably have to take the guns away from the
warlords and their followers? And would that change the nature of the
U.S. mission and extend it well beyond what anyone now is contemplating?


Can the Americans leave before there is some semblance of authority in
place? Is there any hope of seeing a national government in Somalia
soon. 

With all the uncertainty, one prediction seems sure: While President
Bush dispatched the U.S. troops, it will fall to President Clinton to
decide when they come home. 

"We'll just have to stop the roving gangs and take their guns," said
Rep. Mervyn Dymally, D-Calif., chairman of the House African affairs
subcommittee. "We're just going to have to be a little more than just
police, I'm afraid." 

Rep. Howard Wolpe, D-Mich., another subcommitte member, said that unless
progress is made toward a political settlement "all the guns that are
around Mogadishu and buried underground will come back out." 

Wolpe said the presence of U.S. troops might give "some breathing room"
to negotiations under way in Ethiopia between Somali factions. He said
that "unless there is some success in the negotiations, you will see a
repitition of the horror." 

At a news conference at the Capitol on Tuesday, Clinton suggested he'd
like to define the U.S. mission narrowly -- establishment of secure
supply lines. 

But the president-elect also sounded skeptical of talk that the U.S.
forces could withdraw by mid-January. 

"An artificial timetable cannot be imposed upon it," he said, though he
added that he respected Bush's desire to have the troops home by that
time. 

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney also has used the phrase "artificial
deadline" when brushing aside White House predictions the U.S. forces
would be out before Jan. 20, when Clinton takes office. The duration of
the U.S. mission will not be determined by "political events at home,"
said Cheney. 

Rep. Dave McCurdy, D-Okla., chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee, said the United States ought to be working now planning the
transfer of authority to a U.N. peace keeping force. 

"You have a trauma patient," McCurdy said of Somalia. "You stabilize him
and then hand him over to the experts." 

How bad off is the patient? 

At least 300,000 Somalis have died of famine caused by war and drought,
and 2 million are at risk. 

"We're going into a very crude infrastructure, and what infrastructure
there is has been dilapidated, destroyed," said Col. Charlie Coolidge,
vice commander of the Air Force's control center for airlift operations
to Somalia. 

A positive sign: U.S. special envoy Robert Oakley said the price of guns
had dropped sharply in Mogadishu. "People feel they aren't going to use
their weapons and are getting rid of them," he said. But he added that
there were still plenty of guns around. 

The prospects for long-term stability seem uncertain at best. 

"It's premature to think about national discussions," said David R.
Smock, an Africa scholar at the U.S. Institute for Peace. 

Smock recently coordinated a discussion of the African nation's problems
by a group of Somali exiles of differing political views. He said the
consensus was that building a government in Somalia would be "a slow
process," starting with consensus in local and then regional areas and
only gradually reaching national direction. 

------ 

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Donald M. Rothberg covers diplomatic affairs for the
Associated Press. 

<<>>RTw  12/08 1638  ITALY IS WILLING TO SEND TROOPS TO MOZAMBIQUE

ROME, Dec 8, Reuter - Italy is willing to send troops to Mozambique as
part of a larger United Nations peace-keeping operation, Italian Defence
Minister Salvo Ando said on Tuesday. 

U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali recommended on Monday that
the Security Council dispatch some 7,500 troops, police and civilians to
monitor a peace accord between Mozambique's formerly Marxist government
and Renamo (Mozambique National Resistance) rebels. 

"We must guarantee a peaceful transition to democracy in Mozambique,"
the Italian news agency AGI quoted Ando as saying. "Italy is sensitive
to the appeals of the U.N., and it will send troops to Mozambique." 

He did not say how many men Italy would send. 

Italy, which helped broker the peace accord ending one of Africa's
bloodiest civil wars earlier this year, would police the disarming of
rebels and help keep routes open for food distribution to the starving. 

Earlier this month, Italy promised to send a contingent of 2,000 troops
to join a U.S.-led military operation in Somalia to oversee food
distribution in the famine-ravaged country. 

Italy also has troops deployed in Albania. 

REUTER SC CAB MN  <<>>APn  12/08 1436  Somalia-Weather

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- The U.S. Marines and soldiers coming to
Somalia will operate in energy-sapping heat that is impossible to
escape. 

Temperatures often reach 100 degrees by 7:30 a.m. 

"When you leave the house for the office, it's like a furnace outside,"
says Horst Hamborg, of the International Red Cross. 

Relief workers who have been here trying to get food to Somalia's
starving people say heat and disease are the biggest challenges they
have faced. 

Somalis try to avoid standing in the glaring sunlight and many
foreigners have found hats a necessity. Even mules, camels and sheep
move in slow motion in Mogadishu, a coastal city that gets some sea
breeze. 

Lars Weghagen, director of the aid group SwedRelief, said people sweat
all day even if they stay out of the sun. 

"If you don't drink enough, in an hour or two you have a burning
headache. That's the first sign of dehydration," he said. 

Humidity and muddy roads in some areas could be a problem for awhile,
because Somalia is in the final stages of the rainy season despite a
severe drought that has caused widespread famine. 

The wetness means there is a danger of malaria and other diseases. 

After the rains started in September, five of SwedRelief's seven relief
workers got dengue fever from mosquitoes and were sick for two weeks. 

The Red Cross had even worse luck, Hamborg said. 

"All 15 of our Western workers got diarrhea in the first 10 days. Four
of them got malaria, even though they were taking anti-malarial drugs,
and our director got hepatitis and had to be treated in Switzerland." 

<<>>UPn  12/08 1340  Harvard gets $20M grant for rights/health center.

BOSTON (UPI) -- A Swiss countess has given the Harvard School of Public
Health a $20 million grant, the largest in the school's history, to
establish a center to study health and human rights issues, it was
announced Tuesday. 

The grant from an association Countess Albina du Boisrouvray established
in memory of her late son will enable the school to build a research
center to document and analyze how health and illness are linked to
human rights issues. 

"In contrast to the traditional view of disease that emphasizes its
biological causes, this new emphasis on social and human rights factors
could be called 'the new public health,"' said Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg,
dean of the school. 

The center will house some 200 scientists, scholars and fellows who will
examine the connection between medicine and human rights, said Jonathan
Mann, a former World Health Organization official who will direct the
new center and be its first professor in health and human rights. 

The center will focus particularly on children's health problems and
their social causes, such as AIDS, homelessness, violent conflicts
between warring groups and starvation in places such as Somalia. 

Du Boisrouvray said she chose Harvard and Mann because she "wanted the
best person and the best place to take the lead in promoting the basic
right of people, especially children, to health." 

The grant was made by the countess through the Association Francois-
Xavier Bagnoud, which she set up in memory of her son, a helicopter
pilot who was killed at 24 while on a rescue mission in Africa in 1986. 

"He was dedicated to rescuing people, and this endowment will carry on
his loving and caring presence," du Boisrouvray said. 

"The center will be the first of its kind in the world," she said. 

The association already funds the Global AIDS Policy Coalition, which is
also coordinated by Mann. 

At an announcement ceremony, Harvard University President Neil
Rudenstine called the grant magnificant not only in its generosity, "but
in terms of the humanitarian ideals to which it is committed and the
vital work it will support." 

As American troops readied to mount a famine relief effort in Somalia,
Rudenstine said there was an obvious need to address issues such as
"disease and malnutrition, (which) hold so much sway over a great
proportion of the human race." 

Mann said the tasks for the new center will include promoting the
concept that "health is a human right, a birthright for all people." He
said areas of emphasis will include health consequences of human rights
violations and medical implications of discrimination -- especially
against women. 

The countess recounted official resistance in countries including
Romania, Thailand and Colombia to her efforts to help children infected
with the AIDS viruses as one of her reasons for funding the center. 

"Except for giving knowledge and information on a one-to-one basis what
can I do? Nothing," she said, adding that the new Harvard program will
"bring these kinds of issues to the attention of decision makers, the
policy makers, the legislators, the international organizations and get
things changed." 

The countess is a granddaughter of Simon Patino, a Bolivian tin tycoon,
and was raised in Europe, South America and the United States. She is a
cousin of Prince Rainier of Monaco. 

At the age of 19, she married her son's father, Bruno Bagnoud. She
subquently became a journalist and filmmaker, reporting for the French
publication Express and for French television South America and war
zones in the mid-East and South East Asia. 

After her son's death, she sold a film production company she had
founded and converted some of her inherited wealth to good works. 

She raised $50 million from the film company sale and another $50
million from the sale at auction in 1989 of jewelry, pre-Colombian gold
and 18th and 19th century paintings she inherited from her parents,
Count Guy du Boisrouvray and Countess Luz Mila Patino. 

In addition to the Harvard center, the money has been used to fund
programs dealing with AIDS, children's rights, aerospace research and
community programs in Switzerland. 

Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>APn  12/08 1249  Somalia-Full Circle

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By CHARLES J. HANLEY 

AP Special Correspondent 

Superpower strategists once grandly dubbed a broad swath of troubled
Asian and African nations "the arc of crisis," and anchored it with
poor, remote Somalia. 

Now the arc has come full circle, outsiders are shipping grain instead
of guns, and some are blaming the superpowers for a human catastrophe. 

The U.S. troops hitting the beaches of Somalia will find American
fingerprints on the weapons that litter the devastated African land. In
21 years as Somali dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre was bestowed with
thousands of tons of rifles, artillery and other arms -- first Soviet,
then U.S. -- as the Cold War giants jockeyed for geopolitical advantage.


"They were the countries that really retained him in power," a former
military aide, Brig. Gen. Abucar Liban, says of the toppled president.
"... I think today we see the results of this combination of armaments
in the country."

The "results" are armed anarchy. Thousands of youths, some loyal to a
rebel faction, some simply free-lance racketeers, picked up the weapons
and took charge of much of Somalia this year, looting food meant for
starving Somalis, extorting small fortunes from aid workers. 

But the stage was set for chaos in another way, too. 

Siad Barre, the superpower protege, had destroyed much of the inner
workings of Somali society -- political parties, professional groups,
the National Assembly, a free press. He even forbade wedding parties
unless they were government-supervised. 

The Somalia that finally overthrew its tyrant in January 1991 was less a
nation than a collection of clan-based armed bands. And the bands next
turned on each other. 

"The savagery of the fighting points up the absence of civilian
institutions to mediate the conflict -- an absence that is the legacy of
21 years of dictatorship under Mohamed Siad Barre," writes Rakiya Omaar,
a Somali who until recently headed the Africa Watch human rights
organization. 

To Cold War planners, Somalia was a backwater until 1979, a year of
crisis that began with the anti-American revolution in Iran and ended
with the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. 

Strategists suddenly found a troubling "arc" on their maps, an Islamic
crescent stretching from the Afghan mountains, through Iran and the Arab
states of the Persian Gulf, to the Horn of Africa. 

In Washington, "scenarios" unreeled: The Soviets grab Gulf oil; Iran's
revolutionaries undermine Saudi Arabia; the Soviets gain a "blue water"
port in Pakistan. The Kremlin saw its own scenario: The Americans are
working to surround us. 

In Somalia, the "scientific socialist" Siad Barre seized power in 1969
and aligned himself with Moscow. But when he invaded neighboring
Ethiopia in 1977, the Soviets abandoned him and threw their military
support to Ethiopia's new Marxist government. Somalia retreated. 

By 1979, Siad Barre was in the American camp, and Somalia's ports became
a stopover base for Navy task forces patrolling the sea lanes of the
"arc." The flow of weapons began. 

David Eisenberg of the Center for Defense Information, a private
research group in Washington, calculates the United States supplied
Somalia with $206 million in military hardware through the 1980s,
including everything from M-16 assault rifles to 105mm howitzers to Hawk
anti-aircraft missiles. 

A huge new U.S. Embassy, with a staff of 430, opened in late 1989 in
Mogadishu, the capital, symbolizing the American stake in Somalia. But
by then that stake was being withdrawn. Washington had already suspended
military training programs and shipments of lethal weapons to Somalia,
to protest "gruesome" human rights abuses by Siad Barre's military. 

U.S. congressional auditors had reported that in June 1988 a U.S.
shipment of M-16s and millions of rounds of ammunition reached
government troops in rebellious northern Somalia, where they were used
in bloody attacks on civilians. 

The following year, a rebel group complained the U.S. military was
moving arms and personnel for Siad Barre's war, and warned the Americans
to "keep out of this conflict." 

Room for resentment, perhaps. But today in Mogadishu, the two key
faction leaders -- Ali Mahdi Mohamed and Mohamed Farrah Aidid -- both
say they welcome the intervention of U.S. forces to relieve famine and
restore order. 

In fact, Aidid had his young gunmen distribute handbills reading,
"U.S.A. Is Friends." 

In a lowly place like Somalia, the world's lone superpower looks even
more rich and powerful. And bygones can always be bygones. 

As Gen. Liban, who now makes his home in Washington, put it, "So many
Somalis are eager for the United States to help Somalia. They look
forward to this." 

------ 

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Charles J. Hanley has covered international events for
the AP since 1976. 

<<>>RTw  12/08 1203  SOMALI WARLORD VOWS NO ATTACK ON EVE OF LANDING

By Aidan Hartley 

MOGADISHU, Dec 8, Reuter - Somalia's top warlord promised on Tuesday not
to shoot when 1,800 U.S. Marines stormed ashore and a U.S. envoy said
there would be fighting if his gunmen did. 

Warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed broadcast messages over his United Somali
Congress radio urging his rag-tag army of followers to stay away from
the port and airport where the U.S. troops are due to arrive at first
light on Wednesday.

The Marines will spearhead the arrival of some 35,000 troops from a
dozen countries assembled in Operation Restore Hope to crack down on
looting and extortion that have blocked food reaching more than one
million people facing death. 

Advance units of 2,100 French troops being deployed from Red Sea bases
in Djibouti also were expected to fly in on Wednesday. 

Aideed's rival Ali Mahdi Mohamed, self-proclaimed president of the
ruined and famine-ridden East African country, said in a broadcast on
his own radio that the arrival of foreign troops was "a clear answer to
the appeals of the interim government." 

Robert Oakley, George Bush's special representative for Somalia, said
after talks with Aideed that he had been reassured about likely conduct
of fighters of Somalia's main warlord. 

"The Marines have full rights to defend themselves if they feel
threatened," Oakley told reporters when asked if he feared an attack by
gunmen who patrol the town in battlewagons called "technicals," some
fitted out with powerful recoilless rifles. 

"You can't rule out that a technical might attack. If something happens,
it won't be seen as a deliberate attack on Americans," Oakley said. 

Technicals retreated from the Mogadishu port, a warren of thieves and
bandits, on Tuesday night. 

They fired automatic rifles in the air as they left an area where they
have made small fortunes guarding and often stealing food intended for
millions of starving people in Africa's worst famine in decades. 

As night fell the relief community, frustrated by the gunmen in their
attempts to aid famine victims, retreated behind walled compounds to
await the arrival of a force whose mission is without precedent in the
history of international assistance. 

"See you in a couple of days, maybe," said one young woman who has been
working on logistics of moving food past predatory gunmen and
bureacratic extortion for the past six months. 

Some 300,000 people are thought to have died over the past year after
Somalia went from nation state to quarrelling clan fiefdoms when
dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in January 1991 and warlords
wrecked the country in a war for his mantle. 

"Siad Barre has finally left," said one Somali as he surveyed the
near-empty and quiet port. 

U.N. officials worked behind the scenes to secure the release of an
Italian consultant, Berberis Dilleo, being held by Aideed's self-styled
police in a row over a business deal. 

They said it appeared to be a case of attempted extortion of the sort
that has dogged the relief operation since it gathered pace in August
rather than an example of the hostage-taking some aid workers fear
because of the U.S.-led intervention. 

Dilleo was detained on Tuesday after a row with a relative of Aideed,
Mohamed Nur Gutale, head of the long-defunct chamber of commerce, over a
$23,000 irrigation project he failed to clinch. 

Some aid agencies evacuated staff several days ago. Others gave their
employees a chance to leave the country on Tuesday. 

Ten Swedes flew to Nairobi saying their relief work would be impossible
over the next two days. 

Many have fled Baidoa, dubbed the "City of Death," to escape clan
fighting in the central city where scores die daily. Latest radio
messages from the town say more than 40 have died. 

Relief workers and U.N. officials familiar with Somalia's complex clan
politics believe stray Moslem fundamentalists might pose a threat to the
vanguard force. 

The fundamentalists have worked in the fertile breeding ground of
anarchy and poverty in Somalia to establish a network linked to the
extremes of Islam preached in Tehran and Khartoum. 

Aideed's own newspaper, Beel-Deeq, said the arrival of Americans would
change Somalia's Arab League allegiance. 

"Somalia will no longer be a friend of Arab countries. Instead it will
be a friend of Israel," it said. 

REUTER AJH JMC MR  <<>>APn  12/08 1226  Somalia-Starving

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By G.G. LaBELLE 

Associated Press Writer 

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Sadia Mohamed knows exactly why she is
welcoming the arrival of U.S. troops to Somalia. "They will bring food,"
said the 28-year-old mother of four. 

Hers is one of 900 families living in thatched huts at a feeding center
run by the Islamic World Relief Organization in Mogadishu. Mrs. Mohamed
and her children are hungry, but they are not starving. 

In small towns and villages, people are far worse off. Thousands are
near death, too weak from hunger to fight off diseases ranging from
diarrhea to tuberculosis to measles. 

Although relief agencies are feeding 3.2 million people a day in
Somalia, about a third of the country's 6 million people remain
imperiled. U.N. officials estimate 300,000 people have died. 

Perhaps half the grain shipped to Somalia has been looted, forcing
relief officials to avoid ports and bring in food aboard Hercules cargo
planes, an expensive and inefficient process. 

For all that, relief officials have set up more than 1,000 feeding
centers. Though short of goods, these centers are what has changed
Somalia from a country where nearly everyone faced starvation six months
ago, said Paul Mitchell, spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program. 

"What we have today is a country that has pockets of famine and pockets
of need," he said. 

Typically, the feeding centers serve rice, beans and oil once or twice a
day.

The most malnourished people however, are given high-energy biscuits --
made mostly of sugar -- to give them the strength to go on, said Michael
McDonagh, whose Irish relief group Concern concentrates on saving those
near death. 

The next step is a porridge of beans, wheat and cooking oil. At the
therapeutic feeding centers run by Concern, children and adults are fed
eight times a day in tiny servings because they can take only a little
food at a time.

Sadly, many of those arriving at the therapeutic centers do not live.
The worst-off people suffer from withered intestines, in which case they
can only be fed intravenously. 

"If you could put them in a hospital intensive care unit in New York or
London, they might make it," said McDonagh. "But this is Somalia. There
are thousands of them. It's just very difficult to keep alive
individuals who have gone too far." 

Two of Mrs. Mohamed's children fell in this category after she fled to
Mogadishu two years ago. Her husband, a mechanic, had been killed by a
shell explosion in their native Kismayu. 

Just after the family reached the feeding center, her 2-year-old and
5-year-old died. They were too malnourished to recover, said Mrs.
Mohamed, a nurse by profession. 

She and the four surviving children receive one meal a day of rice,
beans and cooking oil. It is enough to survive on, but not much more. 

"I am hungry all the time," Mrs. Mohamed said. 

That's why Mrs. Mohamed is so pleased with the arrival of U.S. troops. 

They may not actually "bring food" -- to use her words -- but food will
get to those who need it, Somalis believe, if Americans chase off the
looters. 

<<>>APn  12/08 1221  Somalia-US Ambassador urges against intervention

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By DIDRIKKE SCHANCHE 

Associated Press Writer 

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- The U.S. ambassador to Kenya said Tuesday he was
hurt by administration officials' reaction to a cable he wrote
cautioning the State Department not to "embrace the Somali tarbaby." 

The report was solicited by the State Department prior to President
Bush's decision to send 28,000 troops to help feed Somalia's starving.
It was leaked to U.S. News and World Report for this week's issue. 

The cable quoted Ambassador Smith Hempstone as urging caution before
risking U.S. casualties at the hands of Somalia's "natural-born
guerrillas." He said it was a complex situation that could mire the
United States for years. 

Hempstone said in an interview he could not discuss the contents of a
classified cable, but did not dispute the way his comments were
reported. 

The magazine quoted Hempstone as saying, "I must confess that I have
been bemused, confused and alarmed by the Gadarene haste with which the
USG (U.S. goverment) seemingly has sought to embrace the Somali
tarbaby." 

He was quoted as saying he saw little likelihood U.S. troops would
provide lasting relief and that he feared they eventually would become
targets. 

"And the body bags will start coming home," he was quoted as saying.
"Then people really won't like it much." 

On television news shows Sunday, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and
acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger took issue with
Hempstone's views. 

Eagleburger accused the ambassador of exaggerating the risks in Somalia,
where two years of anarchy and drought have created a devastating famine
that has killed at least 300,000 people. 

Cheney suggested Hempstone opposed humanitarian assistance to Somalia. 

Hempstone bridled at Cheney's criticism. 

"I really think he went beyond what's proper,"' said Hempstone. "To say
that I opposed humanitarian relief was simply untrue. 

"I'm more hurt than angry." 

Hempstone said a cable he wrote to Washington in August, describing the
dimensions of the regional drought and famine, was what got the American
humanitarian mission under way. 

Since Aug. 21, the United States has based up to 14 C-130 cargo planes
in Kenya and delivered more than 16,000 metric tons of food to the
starving in Somalia and Kenya. 

Hempstone said his personal intervention with President Daniel arap Moi
enabled the airlift to proceed. Kenya had balked, accusing the United
States of moving its aid operation into the East African nation without
authorization. 

Hempstone said the leaked cable represented opinions that had been
solicited before Bush committed U.S. forces to the action. He said he
ultimately backed the president. 

"When the president establishes policy and the flag goes in, I support
the flag," said Hempstone. "I still have my own private reservations." 

Hempstone, a former journalist, has been America's ambassador to Kenya
since 1989. He has riled Kenyan authorities by bluntly criticizing
repression, corruption and electoral malpractice. 

Hempstone said he believed his cable was leaked by Pentagon or State
officials who agreed with his views "but couldn't say it themselves." 

<<>>RTw  12/08 1119  ITALIAN WORKING FOR UNICEF HELD BY SOMALI SOLDIERS

ROME, Dec 8, Reuter -  An Italian man working for a United Nations
agency is being held in the southern part of the Somali capital
Mogadishu, the Italian foreign ministry said on Tuesday. 

Delio De Barberis was arrested on Monday by members of Mohamed Farah
Aideed's Somali National Alliance which controls the southern half of
the city, officials said. 

The northern half is controlled by Aideed's rival Ali Mahdi Mohamed. 

Both Italy and the U.N. said they sent representatives to Mogadishu on
Tuesday to negotiate the De Barberis' release. He was working for
UNICEF, the U.N. Childrens' Fund. 

The two warlords and their allies overthrew former Dictator Mohamed Siad
Barre in January 1991 but then turned on each other in a war that has
destroyed every public service and contributed to a famine that has
killed a quarter of a million people. 

Italy is expected to contribute 2,000 troops to an international force
of up to 36,000 members to police the distribution of food aid. 

REUTER SC CAB PFS  <<>>UPn  12/08 1046  Children beg for food as fighting delays aid airlift

By JOHN PARRY 

GENEVA, Switzerland (UPI) -- Heavy shelling Tuesday diminished chances
for a resumption of the U.N. humanitarian airlift to war-torn Sarajevo
amid a drastic increase in the number of hungry children begging for
food in the shell-shattered streets of the Serb-besieged Bosnian
capital, the U.N. aid agency said. 

The U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) had planned to reopen
Sarajevo airport at 11:59 p.m. after obtaining new safety guarantees for
humanitarian flights from Serbian and Muslim Slav-led Bosnian government
representatives, the officials said. 

"However, this morning our people on the ground told us that shelling is
still heavy and it's highly unlikely the airport is going to open as we
had planned," said UNHCR spokeswoman Sylvana Foa. "We're still talking
with people there." 

Sarajevo airport was closed on Dec. 1 when small-arms fire hit a U.S.
cargo plane bringing food and medicine to the predominantly Muslim Slav
city, which has been under siege by Serbian forces since April. 

Foa quoted Peter Kessler, a UNHCR representative in Sarajevo, as saying
the suspension of the airlift had virtually depleted food stocks for the
estimated half million refugees and residents trapped in the city amid
frigid temperatures, no electricity and no gas supplies. 

He was quoted as saying that U.N. officials had noted "a drastic
increase in the number of children begging for food in the streets, more
than we have ever seen before." 

Most inhabitants of Sarajevo have lost an average of 24 pounds in the
past six months, Foa quoted Kessler as saying. 

She added that UNHCR's information suggested the city would run out of
chlorine supplies to purify water within a week. 

Foa said UNHCR had no immediate plans to transport humanitarian aid to
Sarajevo by train despite the successful delivery by rail on Monday of
relief supplies from Croatia's Adriatic port of Ploce to Mostar,
Bosnia-Herzegovina's second largest city. 

She said engineers from the British and Spanish contingents of the U. N.
Protection Force would first have to survey the 120-mile line from
Mostar to Sarajevo to determine if two bridges blown up last summer
could be repaired. 

"Once we have those bridges repaired, we're in business," she said. 

Meanwhile, representatives of the warring factions began opened separate
talks with U.N. and European Community mediators. 

The three-day talks were to center on the future shape of the newly
independent former Yugoslav republic. 

But, a spokesmen for the peace effort cautioned that the talks were
largely a "map-making exercise" and that little or nothing of political
substance should be expected from them. 

Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>RTw  12/08 1011  FRENCH TROOPS POISED FOR SOMALIA, SETTING A PRECEDENT 

PARIS, Dec 8, Reuter - With French troops poised to fly into Somalia,
French Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy said on Tuesday the U.N. police
action in the famine-stricken African country would establish the duty
of humanitarian interference. 

"From now on in the history of humanity there will be a duty of
interference when lives are threatened," he told reporters. 

"This is a big change from the United Nations Charter." 

Armed forces chief of staff Jacques Lanxade said French troops taking
part in the U.S.-led multinational mercy mission would fly to the
capital Mogadishu from their Djibouti Red Sea base on Wednesday and the
full 2,100-strong contingent would be in place by Christmas. 

More than 35,000 troops -- including 28,000 from the United States --
will be deployed in Somalia to end banditry and lawlessness which have
halted the distribution of aid to over a million starving people. 

U.S. Defence Department officials say the U.N.-mandated operation,
codenamed Restore Hope, will begin on Wednesday. 

Lanxade said the French troops, including a battalion of the tough
Foreign Legion and a Marine light armoured battalion, were allowed to
use whatever force was necessary but would try to hold back. 

"A humanitarian operation is not quite a war...The difference is that
you hold back on using force as long as you can," he said. 

Beregovoy said the government was aware the operation could be risky but
the Somali situation was a challenge for the world. 

"We had to react," he said. 

Marines Brigadier General Rene Delhome, an Africa veteran who will head
the French operation codenamed Oryx, said he would fly to Djibouti, a
former French colony, on Thursday and continue to Mogadishu three or
four days later. 

French troops will follow the advance units by sea and deploy in
southwestern Somalia, around Baidoa, Bardera and Oddur in the sector
alloted to the French in the U.S.-led force. 

The 2,100 men on the ground, all professional soldiers, will be backed
by 12 helicopter gunships equipped to attack armoured vehicles, 10 Puma
transport helicopters and five vessels at sea. 

The French air force is expected to place the dozen Mirage
fighter-bombers and an unknown number of transport aircraft based in
Djibouti at the disposal of the ground force. 

With a support facility operated at Djibouti, a total of 3,000 to 4,000
French troops will be involved. 

Lanxade said the police operation would last two to three months before
a political solution could be sought. 

Health and Humanitarian Action Minister Bernard Kouchner, a pioneer of
the duty of humanitarian interference, said it was essential to help
refugees settle back on the land. 

"This security operation must be immediately accompanied by people
telling (refugees) 'return to your land, here are seeds, here are
working tools, we are with you for a long time," he said in a radio
interview. 

"Let us add a policy of development and national reconciliation to the
humanitarian intervention," Kouchner said. 

The French minister met Somali warlords last week in an apparent
conciliation bid but could find no common ground between them,
diplomatic sources said. 

REUTER FR PI  <<>>RTw  12/08 0630  CHARITY WARNS MILLIONS MAY DIE IN ``COLD WAR''

LONDON, Dec 8, Reuter - Millions could die from cold and hunger in
eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia this winter unless there is
rapid international action, the charity Oxfam said on Tuesday. 

Director David Bryer said: "Millions of people face a new cold war this
winter, a savage mixture of conflict, hunger and sub-zero temperatures.
The international community must act more decisively and urgently." 

Almost seven million people urgently need food, shelter and fuel as
winter tightens its grip, Oxfam said in launching its Cold Front Appeal,
its first major relief effort to include Europe since the aftermath of
World War Two. 

Oxfam aims to raise 500,000 sterling ($787,000) and collect half a
million warm outer garments. The charity said it was asking for new
funds for the appeal and would not be diverting any from Africa or
elsewhere. 

Oxfam's Cold Front Report, published on Tuesday, said recent UN appeals,
particularly for the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, are
underfunded by 493 million pounds sterling ($776 million), and
spotlighted particular problems:

- In former Yugoslavia, where temperatures will drop to minus 20 Celcius
(minus 4 Fahrenheit), more than two million people are living in
temporary shelters; 

- In Albania, an estimated 180,000 are in need of urgent food aid and
the International Federation of the Red Cross believes the country has
only two weeks of food stocks left; 

- In Iraq, 750,000 people need emergency fuel and food aid in mountains
of the north, where temperatures fall to minus 15C (5 F); 

- In Afghanistan food silos are empty and many of the refugees are
living in tents and emergency shelters. Three million will need
emergency help. 

REUTER SE AB PFS  <<>>APn  12/08 0658  Somalia-Market

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By TINA SUSMAN 

Associated Press Writer 

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- When civil war destroyed all remnants of
organized society, Hassan Salad Hersi saw no reason to let his
experience as an accountant go to waste. 

Now, as hundreds of thousands of other Somalis wait in line for food
handouts or buy looted goods in the market, Hersi sits beside a
knee-high stack of Somali schillings trading them for dollars, pounds,
deutchmarks and any other foreign currency that finds it way into his
dank little shop. 

Amid the chaotic consequences of famine and clan warfare, Hersi
maintains one of the few somewhat normal businesses remaining in
Mogadishu. 

"Everybody needs money, whether in peace or war. If they don't buy it
from me, they'll probably go out and steal it, so I'm doing the country
a favor," Hersi said, the sounds and smells of the crowded marketplace
saturating his sweltering office. 

Business rises and ebbs with the number of foreigners in Mogadishu. 

With American troops expected to arrive shortly, it soared. 

On Friday, a dollar bought about 6,000 Somali schillings. By Monday, the
dollar had dropped to 5,000 schillings, a result of hundreds of foreign
journalists and relief workers arriving to await the Americans. 

Hersi prefers to buy in bulk because most of the customers trying to
trade schillings for foreign currency are business people looking for
large chunks of money to make purchases in other countries. 

Big sales also give him a chance to unload the piles of Somali bills at
his feet. Each bill shows Mogadishu's main port with seven ships in
harbor. That scene was drawn long before war reduced the docks to
desolate targets for snipers and gans of looters. 

On an average day, Hersi buys about $15,000 worth of foreign currency.
He charges a 1.5 percent commission and makes enough to feed his wife
and five children. 

In a country with no laws, Hersi's is one of the few businesses not
necessarily thriving off others' misfortune. 

His office is in the middle of the city's main outdoor market, the
Bakhaarka, where merchants openly sell sacks of U.S. grain, Italian
beans and other goods stolen from relief workers. 

The central market barely skipped a beat on Monday when the first U.S.
warplanes streaked over Mogadishu. 

Buyers and sellers stared at the F-14s, then returned to bartering the
same sort of looted goods the Americans are supposed to help deliver to
the needy. 

The next meal is the only thing that matters here, even if it means
dealing in goods intended for starving children. 

When a U.N. relief ship turned back last month after being shelled off
Mogadishu, for Abdul Kadiraui it meant he could keep on charging $1 per
kilo (2.2 pounds) for the looted rice, beans and lentils he sells at
Haamar-Waeina marketplace. 

The ship's arrival could have cut his profits by almost half. 

Kadiraui and others at Haamar-Waeina buy in bulk from sellers in the
Bakhaarka market, who often have bought goods straight off hijacked
relief trucks. No attempt is made to conceal that these are stolen
goods. 

Donkeys drag carts loaded with wheat in burlap sacks reading "A Gift
From Denmark," for example. 

Kadiraui, a former craftsman, said as he sold the goods to women in
colorful shawls, "I'm not happy because my previous profession was
better than this, but I've got nothing else to do if I want to eat." 

<<>>RTw  12/08 0531  NIGERIA LIKELY TO JOIN SOMALIA OPERATION

LAGOS, Dec 8, Reuter - Nigeria is likely to help the U.S.- led military
mission in Somalia to end famine and clan warfare, official sources said
on Tuesday. 

The sources did not say what form the help might take but foreign
diplomats said Nigeria had indicated it would send around 200 soldiers
to join the U.N.-mandated operation. 

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, has about 8,000 troops in a
West African intervention force in Liberia and has supplied peacekeepers
to Angola and the former Yugoslavia. 

REUTER JOD NJP  <<>>RTw  12/08 0513  BAIDOA - CITY OF DEATH LIVES UP TO NAME

By Andrew Hill 

MOGADISHU, Dec 8, Reuter - Misery lies behind every busted wall in
Baidoa, dubbed by aid workers the City of Death. 

Beyond the walls of a once-pretty country town at the heart of Somalia's
apocalyptic famine is a second conurbation of thousands of twig huts
with plastic sheets where the destitute and dying have camped for food
handouts. 

The town has more than lived up to its name in the past hours. At least
48 people have been killed in clan fighting in the centre of the town,
and 50 are in hospital with gunshot wounds. 

Journalists who visited Baidoa on Monday spoke of overflowing hospitals
with floors covered in blood and guts. 

"I saw a one-year child, his head gaping open from a gunshot wound,"
Peter Hillmore of the London Observer told Reuters, "A pile of
intestines were on the floor, blood was everywhere." 

He said a small team of American doctors from the U.S. charity
International Medical Corps (IMC) were operating in atrocious conditions
while gunmen traded gunfire in the crowded marketplace. 

Reporters said nearly all the victims were innocent passers- by. 

The cause of the dispute is unclear bt it appears that sub- clans of the
local tribe are vying for control of the town before a U.S.-led
intervention force stamps a new order on Somalia's anarchy. 

"The sooner the Americans arrive the better," Michael O'Reilly of the
Irish charity Concern was quoted as saying. 

Every day, for months and months, a truck has rumbled around Baidoa
picking up bodies from feeding centres for burial. 

The death rate has dropped from 400 a day last August to around 70 a few
weeks ago after the world launched a mammoth relief operation last
summer. 

But insecurity has dogged the relief operation and every time fighting
breaks out and programmes are disrupted the count quickly goes up again.


Now the "death wagon" is busy again. "I saw at least 10 people being
loaded into it from just one house," said Hillmore. 

No first-time visitor to Baidoa would recognise the hospitals. Like
every other building, they are mere shells with bullet-pocked walls and
an overwhelming air of decay. 

The Los Angeles-based IMC runs a hospital, across the street from the
"intensive care" unit of the Irish agency World Concern. 

Their only connection to modern medicine are their names. IMC took over
what was left of Baidoa's hospital after the town was criss-crossed by
desert armies in the battle to drive dictator Mohamed Siad Barre from
the country in 1991. 

Here fresh-faced young medics remove bullets from gunmen's wounds by
flashlight in an operating theatre where mosquitos and flies compete for
food in the dank and heavy air. 

Recent amputees hobble around the courtyard in rags. Destitute children
from nearby feeding centres beg for extra scraps outside the gates,
where a sign tells visitors no guns and no battle wagons are allowed
inside. 

Across the street children die daily in Concern's last-ditch shelter for
those too weakened by malnutrition to be fed at centres where
high-protein porridge is cooked in pots improvised from discarded oil
drums. 

Often, they are too weak to cough, and when they do, it can be their
last act. Mothers watch over their ailing charges, waving away flies
from their lifeless eyes with twigs from trees outside. 

There are similar places all over the town, whose population was 30,000
but is probably four times that now because of the influx of the
starving from the surrounding countryside, once some of Somalia's
richest. 

REUTER AJH JMC DLT  <<>>RTw  12/08 0409  ALGERIA PREPARING TO JOIN SOMALIA AID OPERATION

ALGIERS, Dec 8, Reuter - Algeria is preparing to join the U.S.-led
military mission in Somalia to end famine and the clan warfare which has
blocked relief operations there. 

In a statement late on Monday, the foreign ministry said Algeria had
been asked to take part in the U.N.-mandated efforts. 

"Algeria is disposed to reply favourably to this request," it said,
adding that it had started talks with the United Nations and other
parties involved to determine the form its help should take. 

REUTER JFB DRB  <<>>RTw  12/07 1809  POLL FINDS AMERICANS SUPPORT TROOPS TO SOMALIA 

NEW YORK, Dec 7, Reuter - Americans are solidly behind President George
Bush's decision to send troops to Somalia but are split on whether there
should be a long-term commitment to help end the famine, according to a
survey released on Monday. 

A CBS News poll found that 72 per cent support the military deployment
to help ensure that food reaches those in need in the African country.
Only 16 per cent were opposed. 

But there was a split over how long the United States should remain and
the role of the military. 

Nearly half, 48 per cent, said the soldiers should remain only as long
as it takes to set up food supply lines. Some 42 per cent said they
should stay as long as it takes to make sure Somalia remains peaceful. 

Rebel factions have made it nearly impossible to distribute food in
Somalia. Some aid groups say that the United States must help end the
chaotic political situation in order to solve the root cause of the
famine. 

The survey also found that there has been a high level of public
interest in the famine, with 39 per cent saying they were paying a great
deal of attention to what is happening there. Another 43 per cent said
they were paying some attention to the news. 

The nationwide telephone survey of 835 adults was conducted on December
6. The poll results have a sampling error of plus or minus four
percentage points. 

REUTER WJS LJG JE  <<>>APn  12/07 1759  New U.S. COngress women - Women's Agenda

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By KATHERINE RIZZO 

Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The 18 female newcomers to the House took just an
hour Monday to draft a position statement on their priorities: Head
Start, family leave and abortion legislation, and better protection
against sexual harassment for women working on Capitol Hill. 

"One thing I was amazed at was how easily the women put this together,"
said Rep.-elect D eborah Pryce, a Republican from Ohio. 

"I think perhaps it's just the way women work," she said. "The dynamic
of the group when the room was totally female was very different than
other meetings I've been in. It's hard to explain." 

The 15 Democratic and three Republican women said their first priority
will be to get the Head Start program enough money to serve all needy
pre-schoolers. 

Lawmakers have given the program enough money to serve only a fraction
of eligible children. 

The women also said they'll push for legislation guaranteeing workers
the right to unpaid leav e when there's an illness or other family
emergency. But they didn't take a position on any particular bill. 

The women won't be speaking with one voice when it comes to the fine
print, said newcomer Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, D-Pa. 

"We have very different opinions on a lot of these issues," she said.
"We are not saying here that we support the same piece of legislation." 

The women also didn't go into detail on abortion, but said they all call
themselves "pro-choice," and all want to see Congress pass legislation
guaranteeing a woman's right to an abortion. 

The gro up's other priority is to bring Congress under federal laws
banning sexual harassment in the workplace -- a timely issue in light of
recent allegations by 15 women that Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., had made
unwelcome sexual advances over two decades. 

"Our feeling is that all of us should be held accountable the same way
that anybody else is," said Margolies-Mezvinsky. "It is not enough just
to vote correctly." 

<<>>APn  12/07 1734  US-Somalia

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By SUSANNE M. SCHAFER 

AP Military Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The bulk of U.S. troops may not get ashore in Somalia
until days after a Marine vanguard lands because of poor conditions at
Mogadishu's port and nearby airfields, Pentagon officials said Monday. 

Bringing nearly 30,000 soldiers into a country that has been devastated
by warring bandit clans requires a massive effort, especially since no
supplies of fuel or water exist, nor modern means to transport them, the
officials said. 

"Expectations are pretty high, but people have to understand how
difficult it will be to get in there," said one senior military officer.


"We can drop thousands of men on the airfields, but who's going to feed
'em after a while?" said a second officer. 

Both commented only on condition their names not be used. 

Plans now call for the first wave of several hundred Marines to enter
Mogadishu early Wednesday to begin "Operation Restore Hope" aimed at
saving thousands of Somalis from starvation. 

Their mission will be to take control of the port and the international
airfield in Mogadishu, and another airport in Baidoa, a famine-wracked
town 200 miles to the west. 

The Marines, backed by their three amphibious warships, carry enough
supplies to sustain themselves for at least 30 days. 

But it will be several days before their fellow Marines from Camp
Pendleton, Calif., begin to take off for Somalia. And it will be several
more after that before members of the Army's light infantry from Fort
Drum, N.Y., will begin leaving the United States, the officers said. 

President-elect Clinton, asked in Chicago if he had a plan to deal with
Somalia, said, "President Bush is in charge of this mission. Let's let
the mission be carried out." 

During the Persian Gulf War build-up, U.S. forces made use of modern
technology at ports and bases in Saudi Arabia that had been built years
earlier.

They were able to tap into an elaborate supply system and get all the
oil and gas they needed, officers said, But in Somalia, they said,
moving supplies inland will mean trucking them and maybe even building
roads. 

At the Mogadishu seaport and airport, where U.S. cargo ships and planes
are to unload, an immediate problem is lack of lighting, senior Navy
officers at the Pentagon said. Navy Seabees were heading there to
install lighting so the cargo handling doesn't have to stop at night,
said the officers. 

They, too, briefed reporters on condition they not be identified by
name. 

The port is relatively shallow and could present difficulties to the
huge U.S. supply ships heading there. 

As for air traffic, officers said they hoped to get a control system
running and clear enough space near the airports so planes could fly in,
unload and take off in a steady stream. 

On Monday, Navy F-14 fighters from the aircraft carrier USS Ranger flew
reconnaissance missions over Mogadishu, gathering information about
sites where the Marines are expected to land, a Pentagon source said. 

Ambassador-at-Large Robert Oakley and Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Frank
Libutti were to meet in Mogadishu with Somali clan leaders to brief them
on what the Marines will do after their landing, said Pentagon spokesman
Lt. Cmdr. Joseph F. Gradisher. 

At the White House, spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said preparations were on
schedule and that the initial response from the Somali warlords to the
United Nations resolution that set the stage for the military operation
has been better than expected. 

"Many of the problems we had feared most have not materialized," said
Fitzwater. 

Some 1,800 Marines have been aboard three ships -- the Tripoli, Juneau
and Rushmore -- off the Somalia coast since last week, and have been
joined by the three-ship battle group led by the Ranger. 

President Bush has said he hopes to withdraw most of the U.S. troops and
turn over the policing of the massive humanitarian aid effort to U.N.
peacekeeping troops before he leaves office Jan. 20. 

Fitzwater said that deadline is "somewhat artificial in terms of the
military realities, but nevertheless I can assure you the president's
objective is to begin the withdrawal as soon as possible." 

He said some U.S. support troops will stay behind with the U.N.
peacekeepers, and other forces will remain nearby on U.S. ships in the
Indian Ocean. 

Fitzwater emphasized that the role of the U.S. troops is to get the food
through and prevent starvation, not to shape a new government for
Somalia. 

"We will cling tenaciously to that," he said. <<>>APn  12/07 1708  UN-Somalia Criticism

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By FRANCES D'EMILIO 

Associated Press Writer 

ROME (AP) -- The health minister of one of Somalia's competing leaders
on Monday blamed U.N. "neglect" for much of his country's disaster, but
welcomed an American-led military operation to get food to Somalia's
starving millions. 

Last week, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved the use of
military force to guarantee that relief is not stolen at gunpoint by
feuding clans and marauding bandits. Some 28,000 American troops will
head a multinational force set to beginning landing in Somalia early
Wednesday. 

"The United Nations neglected Somalia for one full year during which
human catastrophe could have been averted," Abdi Hire told delegates to
a U.N.-sponsored international conference on nutrition. 

But "we welcome the latest initiative," said Hire, who is health
minister under an interim government headed by warlord Ali Mahdi
Mohamed. 

Hire is one of four Somali delegates to the weeklong conference. Ali
Mahdi claims to lead the country, but in fact all central authority
broke down in Somalia after Siad Barre was ousted. 

Civil war and drought have combined to deadly effect since rebels drove
out dictator Mohamed Siad Barre nearly two years ago. At least 300,000
Somalis have died and 2 million more are in danger of starvation. 

Hire said 3,000 people die daily in Somalia, most of them children under
5. 

"Of course responsibility should be borne by Somalis," said Hire,
referring to the food bandits "who are holding the whole country
hostage." 

"But we must state that the United Nations didn't shoulder its
responsibility," he said. 

<<>>APn  12/07 1644  TB Epidemic

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By RICHARD PYLE 

Associated Press Writer 

NEW YORK (AP) -- Strong measures, including mandatory quarantine for
uncooperative patients, are needed to deal with an alarming nationwide
resurgence of tuberculosis, a panel of specialists said Monday. 

The highly contagious respiratory disease, considered well under control
less than a decade ago, now threatens to become epidemic in the United
States, they said. Certain segments of the population -- immigrants,
children, hospital patients, the homeless, AIDS patients and prisoners
-- are at greatest risk. 

Dr. Lee B. Reichman, president of the American Lung Association, said
his organization has tried for years to alert the public and government
leaders that the country was "on the brink of a crisis" that included
new, highly drug-resistant strains. 

"Now we have that crisis," he told reporters. "Now is the time to fight
tuberculosis before we revert back to the turn-of-the-century plague
that took the lives of millions." 

Tuberculosis, caused by airborne bacteria that attack the lungs, is one
of the most communicable diseases and kills more people worldwide than
any other infectious agent, said Reichman, chief spokesman for the panel
of five specialists in lung disease. 

U.S. cases were declining by about 6 percent a year until the mid-1980s
when the trend reversed, with an increase of 18 percent from 1985 to
1991, said Dr. Bess Miller, an official of the Atlanta-based Centers for
Disease Control. 

The panel's key recommendations include testing of all TB patients and
persons in contact with them for the AIDS virus, and upgraded
ventilation and air cleaning systems in hospitals, nursing homes and
prisons. 

While the average person has a 10 percent chance of contracting TB in a
lifetime, people with the AIDS virus have a 10 percent annual risk, they
said. 

The recommendations were first adopted in a joint statement last March
by the Lung Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC and
the Infectious Disease Society of America, and published this month in a
journal on respiratory ailments. 

The doctors in particular stressed a need for careful monitoring of TB
patients to make sure they take medicine as prescribed, to prevent them
from spreading the disease. 

"We must have directly observed therapy -- the patient being seen to
take medicine -- to guarantee compliance," said Dr. Richard F. Jacobs, a
professor of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas. 

The doctors conceded that their most sensitive recommendation was for
the physical isolation of reluctant or uncooperative patients. 

"Mandatory quarantine, after due process, may be a needed last resort
for patients who either won't or can't take TB medication," their
statement said. 

Reichman said that would be needed only in rare situations. 

He said the cost of eliminating TB, once figured at $36 million a year,
is now estimated at $515 million a year. 

Miller and other panel members said although TB is widespread among
immigrants, there was no direct correlation between the disease's surge
and the influx of refugees and other newcomers. 

<<>>APn  12/07 1457  Children's Home

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- One of the nation's largest private service
organizations for children is divided over expensive meals and other
fringe benefits by its president. 

Children's Home Society of California President James T. Spradley Jr.
made more than $183,000 last year in salary and fringe benefits,
according to the Los Angeles Times. 

He approved his own expense reports and over several years collected at
least $155,000 for such things as meals, entertainment, travel and
lodging, the newspaper said Sunday. 

At the same time, the 101-year-old society serving 10,000 children cut
in half its staff, hiked adoption fees and cut its budget from $21
million in 1989 to $16.6 million in 1991. 

A letter sent last spring to the board of directors by a group of
anonymous current and former employees accused Spradley, 47, of "fiscal
improprieties and mistreatment of staff." 

Spradley, who lives in San Francisco, refused to be interviewed. 

But society attorney Richard J. Simmons said the allegations were false
and that an audit by an independent accounting firm found no
improprieties by Spradley or his top aides. 

Society officials also said more than 85 percent of employees signed
letters supporting Spradley. 

A copy of the June 8 audit by Coopers & Lybrand found that Spradley and
three top aides spent $303,000 on meals, entertainment, travel and other
expenses between July 1, 1988, and March 31, 1992. 

The audit said most of the $80,000 spent on meals and entertainment was
for Children's Home staff and not potential donors, concluding it was
"difficult to determine the necessity or business purpose" of those
expenses. 

The $20 million-a-year agency paid for entertaining of some of
Spradley's employees at Fleur de Lys, Chez Panisse and other fine
restaurants in the San Francisco Bay area, first-class travel within the
state, meals for staff at L'Orangerie and other restaurants in Southern
California and a staff Christmas party at the Rangoon Racquet Club in
Beverly Hills. 

One former CHS employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, said she
dined with Spradley several times in Los Angeles during the past few
years, and the organization picked up the tab for what were mainly
social functions with drinking and non-business conversation. 

The audit also said the agency settled a sexual harassment claim in
1988. The Times reported that sources said $6,500 was paid to a woman
employee who claimed that Spradley made unwanted sexual advances. 

<<>>RTw  12/07 1342  SOMALI CLAN WARFARE KILLS 48 IN BAIDOA

By Aidan Hartley 

MOGADISHU, Dec 7, Reuter - Forty-eight people were killed and 50 were
wounded in fierce clashes on Monday between rival Somali clans vying for
control of Baidoa before U.S. troops arrive, relief workers said. 

"We have a report from our team leader of 48 killed and 50 wounded in
factional fighting," Rick Grant, spokesman for the international agency
CARE, told reporters. 

The clashes involved rival families apparently struggling for control of
the famine-hit town, dubbed "the city of death." 

A U.S.-led multinational force of 36,000 troops is poised to start
deploying within the next 48 hours to ensure relief supplies reach
several million starving people in Somalia. 

The U.N. Security Council ordered the deployment to protect supplies
from rival clans who have reduced Somalia to a state of anarchy. Gunmen
have been preventing aid groups from distributing food and have been
stealing from convoys. 

Earlier a CARE spokesman said 30 people had been killed on Sunday in
factional fighting in the town, 230 km (150 miles) west of the capital
Mogadishu. 

"The strange thing is they stopped for lunch," said CARE official James
Fennell, who added that gun battles raged in the centre of town where
foreign relief organisations have offices. 

Relief workers said large numbers of wounded were being brought into the
local hospital, where the U.S.-based International Medical Corps team of
doctors is toiling to deal with horrific wounds despite primitive
medical facilities. 

The agencies have all been scaling down their staff numbers due to the
insecurity and fears for the safety of aid workers at the hands of
gunmen ahead of the deployment of U.S.-led forces which is expected to
take place on Wednesday, the same day they move into the capital
Mogadishu. 

On Monday the Irish agency GOAL evacuated all their staff but CARE,
which has scaled down to three men, said it had no plans to pull out any
more. 

A U.N. political sources said the clashes were taking place because
gunmen were jostling for control of the town before the foreign troops
arrived. 

"It's to do with control of the protection rackets, and the trade in qat
(a narcotic leaf flown in from Kenya and chewed by many young Somali
men)," added Fennell. 

The gunmen have made a living out of extorting money from aid agencies
by providing "security" for their offices and vehicles. 

Relief officials believe scores of "technicals," the battered cars
favoured by militias as their battle wagons, have fled to the town to
escape confrontation with the U.S.-led forces in Mogadishu. 

Militias loyal to warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed, who has only nominal
control over the town, have flooded into Baidoa after coming back from
an offensive against rival clans in the south of the country which has
got bogged down in heavy rains, aid workers said. 

Baidoa has come to be known as "death city" because it was at the
epicentre of Somalia's famine. At the height of the suffering, 400
people were dying daily in the town, but aid efforts have brought this
down to a couple of dozen a day in the last four months. 

REUTER AHH JMC MR  <<>>RTw  12/07 1339  ENDING THE FAMINE ONLY A START ON ENDING WORLD HUNGER

ROME, Dec 7, Reuter - International intervention in Somalia to police
distribution of food was a turning point in history but only a start to
ending world hunger, a French minister said on Monday. 

"Acting in Somalia is only a beginning. People are dying elsewhere: in
southern Sudan, in Liberia, in Mozambique, in Angloa, in Burma and in
Bosnia," French Health and Humanitarian Affairs Minister Bernard
Kouchner told a United Nations conference on nutrition. 

Kouchner said intervention to prevent widespread starvation was the
"highest form of diplomacy." 

"It will restore our dignity as human beings and will preserve the
rights of future generations to live in peace and prosper," he said.
Kouchner has just returned from a visit to the Somali capital of
Mogadishu. 

A U.S.-led multinational force of 36,000 troops is poised to start
deploying within the next 48 hours to ensure relief supplies reach
several million starving people in Somalia. 

"As long as there is one child, only one child to request the right to
eat and to treatement, I will fight so that this right in international
emergencies is developed," Kouchner said. 

"It is possible to refuse the unacceptable, to not leave victims at the
hands of their executioners." 

REUTER YT BM  <<>>APn  12/07 1252  Somalia-Restoring Health

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By RANDI HUTTER EPSTEIN 

Associated Press Writer 

LONDON (AP) -- For Somalias starving children, the U.S. mercy mission
brings hope of survival. But even urgent feeding will not save some of
them from permanent damage, health experts say. 

In the worst cases, starving children and adults suffer from withered
intestines. In this case they can only be fed intravenously, and this
may not be available for all those who need it. 

But with proper care, even skeletal children can be restored to health
without brain, nerve or organ damage -- although their growth may be
permanently stunted. Oost Somalis are normally slender and of average
heighv. 

"Unless sooeone is essentially dead, you have a fairly good chance of
bringing them back regardless of how dehydrated or how malnourished they
are," said Dr. Alfred Sommer, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public
Health. "Only the most severe, those that are about to die within a day,
may not be helped." 

Dr. Joseph Warshaw, chairman of the department of pediatrics at Yale
University, said he was doubtful relief workers could save children who
can no longer take nourishment by mouth, unless they have access to
intravgnous feeding. 

But the ones who do survive "will havg a good outcome," je said. "That
is why timing is critical." 

Several months of starvation by itself will not cause brain damage,
Warshaw said. But children who were chronically malnourished earlier in
their lives may suffer such damage. 

Yale's Sommer based his prediction on studies of hundreds of men born
during an eight-month famine in the Netherlands after World War II. The
men did not suffer diminished intelligence or long-lasting organ damage,
he said. 

Warshaw said many American babies of mothers with an inadequate diets
were born underweight, but "catch up almost completely" if properly
nourished. 

Dr. Michele Barry, an international health expert and associate
professor of medicine at Yale, said nourishing starving children is a
labor-intensive process that can take up to six weeks, beginning with
giving children tiny sips of nutrient-packed solutions every two hours. 

Famine victims are vulnerable to infections and their bodies lose the
ability to absorb nutrients, she said. 

Children are rehydrated first with oral rehydration solution, water,
sugar and salt. Then they are given a solution that contains proteins,
carbohydrates and fats. 

In Somalia, the United Nations is using Unamix, a formula with 40
percent maize, 35 percent bean flour, 15 percent sunflower oil, 10
percent sugar, and vegetable oil, said Barry. 

<<>>RTw  12/07 1023  SOMALIA SHATTERED BY CLAN HATREDS

By Aidan Hartley 

MOGADISHU, Dec 7, Reuter - U.S.-led  forces moving into Somalia this
week will find a nation shattered by clan hatreds and ruled by warlords
and their gunmen. 

Going under nicknames like "Big Ears," "The Hunchback" and "He Who Will
Not Be Insulted," the warlords have carved Somalia into fiefdoms. No
government has existed for two years. 

The main five fierce clans of Somalia were traditionally ruled by
Islamic religious figures and elders. 

It was a warlike society. "My clan against the enemy, my family against
the clan, me against my brother," the Somali maxim said. 

The elders' job was to settle constant disputes over scarce grazing and
wells and to arrange money payment for blood shed in clan fighting --
100 camels for a man's life. 

But Somalia was flooded with guns by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and
by the United States in the 1980s as the superpowers jostled for
influence in the Cold War. 

In January 1991 guerrillas from clan-based groups ousted dictator
Mohamed Siad Barre, who fled to his native region of Gedo in the
southwest and later to exile. 

Modern weapons then put clan warfare on a new and lethal level and made
warlords of men who had no traditional standing in society -- former
army officers, hoteliers or diplomats. 

Big Ears, the Hunchback and others are minor warlords, but every Somali
knows their nicknames and real names. 

In Mogadishu, Ali Mahdi Mohamed has his stronghold in the north of the
capital and claims to be interim president. 

Mohamed Farah Aideed controls the south of the city and has influence
over a triangle of territory stretching to the Ethiopian border in the
west. 

The north, which was ruled by Britain until independence in 1960 then
joined with the former Italian colony to the south, seceeded in May 1991
under the name of Somaliland. 

The northeast, the calmest part of Somalia, is ruled by strongly
pro-U.S. Mohamed Abshir while the south is run by a melee of gang
leaders and clan coalitions, one of whose leaders is Mohamed Said Hersi
Morgan, Siad Barre's son-in-law. 

After Siad Barre's fall, militias grabbed anything they could, digging
up underground copper cables and pulling down statues of national heroes
to export as scrap. 

Telephones, electric and water services were wrecked. 

Selling the loot paid for more guns, and for planeloads of qat, a
stimulant leaf from Kenya that Somalis chew to get a jumpy,
amphetamine-like high. 

The militias are young men without military training, known as "moriyan"
which roughly translates as "country bumpkin." Most were herding camels
in the bush until their took up guns in the past two years. 

With the collapse of law and order Somalis -- who unlike most African
nations have a common language and religion -- had no choice but to seek
protection in their clen identities. 

Minority clans, such as the "Midgan" or "Untouchables" and the Bantu and
Rahanwein farming communities, were made destitute by the fierce nomadic
clans. 

Much of the fighting took place in Somalia's most precious land. 

"Every faction wanted to occupy the agricultural areas," said Aden
Mohamed Ali, a Rahanwein who works for the U.N. 

The war generated a famine in which 300,000 have already died and 1,000
are still dying daily. 

REUTER AHH AJH JA  <<>>RTw  12/07 0647  SOMALIA -FIGHTING IN DJIBOUTI 

Djibouti's opposition said fighting between government forces and rebel
tribesmen broke out at the weekend around the town of Tadjourah, north
of the capital. 

The opposition said in a statement sent to Paris that government forces
were blockading Tadjourah by land and sea and fighting had damaged
wells, causing a water shortage. 

It said residents were afraid of violence by government troops and asked
France, which has been monitoring a shaky ceasefire in Djibouti, to
appeal for calm. 

Sporadic clashes have continued despite the truce since Afar tribesmen
of the Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy (FRUD) rebelled
a year ago in the north and east of Djibouti. 

A French army spokesman said the fighting would not affect the movements
of French troops to Somalia. He said a French unit stationed in Djibouti
was ready to go into the famine-stricken Horn of Africa nation but has
not yet moved in. 

REUTER FR JLF  <<>>RTw  12/07 0507  SOMALIA'S AGONY STRETCHES BACK DECADES

MOGADISHU, Dec 7, Reuter - A U.S.-led task force awaited orders on
Monday to deploy in Somalia, where gunmen in the famine-stricken city of
Baidoa killed 24 people over the weekend. Following is a chronology of
events in Somalia: 

July 1, 1960 - Independence saw unification of Somali peoples ruled
since late 19th century by Britain and Italy. 

October 21, 1969 - Army seizes power in bloodless coup. Major- General
Mohamed Siad Barre takes control. 

July 1, 1976 - Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party (SRSP) formed as
sole political party modeled on communist parties of Eastern Europe. 

July 1977 - Somalia commits army to war in Ogaden desert region of
Ethiopia and captures major towns. 

March 1978 - Somali army retreats before counter-offensive of
Soviet-backed Ethiopian forces. 

August 7, 1990 - Rebel SNM, United Somali Congress (USC) and Somali
Patriotic Movement (SPM) form alliance to topple Siad Barre. 

January 27, 1991 - Siad Barre's palace overrun as rebels seize capital.
He flees by tank. 

November 17, 1991 - Power struggle between rival clan warlords Mohamed
Farah Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohamed erupts into violence. Thousands of
civilians killed and wounded. 

March 3, 1992 - Rival warlords sign U.N.-sponsored ceasefire but fail to
agree on monitoring provisions. 

April 24 - U.N. Security Council creates new U.N. military and
humanitarian mission by approving deployment of 50 ceasefire observers
in Mogadishu. 

April 29 - Siad Barre flees into exile. 

July 23 - A 46-strong U.N. military observer team arrives to monitor
shaky ceasefire. 

July 27 - Security Council calls for urgent relief airlift. 

Aug 12 - U.N. reaches outline agreement with Aideed for 500 armed U.N.
personnel to guard Mogadishu port and escort food supplies to the
starving. 

Aug 18 - U.S. aid organisation leaders say at least 350,000 Somali
children have died in the famine and civil strife. 

Aug 19 - France starts emergency airlift of food, followed two days
later by a massive U.S. airlift. 

Aug 28 - Security Council authorises deployment of 3,000 more troops to
protect relief supplies. 

Sept 12 - U.N. announces huge increase in relief operations. 

Sept 19 - Warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed returns to Mogadishu from bush
battles and rules out deployment of 3,000 U.N. troops. 

Sept 21 - Pakistani contingent of 500 troops ferried to Mogadishu in
week-long airlift by U.S. transport planes as U.S. ships offshore
provide logistical support. 

Oct 22 - Senior U.N. officials say Aideed is preventing Pakistani troops
from deploying. 

Oct 25 - Fresh fighting in southern Somalia seriously disrupts relief
efforts, U.N. officials say. 

Oct 26 - U.N. special representative for Somalia, Mohammed Sahnoun,
resigns following dispute with the secretary-general over Sahnoun's
criticism of U.N. handling of famine. He is replaced by Iraqi diplomat
Ismat Kittani. 

Nov 30 - U.N. secretary-general asks Security Council to authorise use
of force to deliver humanitarian aid to Somalia. 

Dec 3 - All 15 members of Security Council endorse full-scale military
operation led by the United States as 1,800-strong force of U.S. Marines
arrives off Somalia. U.S. defence officials say more than 25,000 troops
might fly there.

Dec 4 - In a national television address, President George Bush says he
has ordered more than 25,000 U.S. troops to Somalia. 

Dec 5 - Defence Minister Pierre Joxe says France will send more than
2,000 soldiers to join the U.S.-led force. Soldiers from Italy, Canada,
Belgium, Egypt, Abu Dhabi and Mauritania also expected to participate. 

Dec 6 - Relief grain is trucked out of the port of Mogadishu for the
first time since gunmen shelled it a month ago. Clan fighting kills 24
Somalis in the famished town of Baidoa. 

REUTER JCH  <<>>WP   12/07 MMM  Somalia - Confiscate the Guns

Confiscate the Guns; If most of the weapons remain when the Marines and
the successor U.N. force leave, chaos will promptly return. 

By Jessica Mathews 

This is the third massive famine in the Horn of Africa in 20 years. More
than a million died one of the cruelest deaths, and millions more nearly
starved in '73-'74 and again in '84-'85. Each cycle - including, so far,
the situation in Somalia - has been a replica of its predecessor. If the
relief plan is not drastically improved, this catastrophe, too, will
surely repeat. 

Each time the tragedy has been the result of a complex interaction of
civil anarchy and ecological breakdown (not, primarily, lack of
rainfall) each one causing and reinforcing the other. Each time the
international response has been inexcusably late, triggered only when
newspaper photos and television footage become too painful to bear. Each
response has been an ad hoc, emergency action, seemingly untouched by
prior experience and costing as much or more than the investment that
could have largely prevented the tragedy. 

The U.S./U.N. plan for Somalia is missing a crucial element of its
military objective and is entirely lacking both a necessary political
component and the attention to repair the underlying problem. Now is the
time to add these elements. Otherwise, experience proves that once the
excitement of the military venture fades, the international community
will lapse back into malign neglect. 

The military plan must include disarmament, not simply the temporary
establishment of peaceful zones where people can be fed. Somalia is
saturated with weapons, many left from the days when it was a Cold War
pawn for first one and then the other superpower. If most of these guns
remain when the Marines and the successor U.N. force leave, chaos will
promptly return. 

The questions for debate are how disarmament can be accomplished,
whether by incentives or violence, and whose task it should be. A U.N.
force is more appropriate politically but will be less able militarily.
A shared mission may be the answer. Whoever does it, the guns must be
got rid of or the announced military aim of restoring some semblance of
security in Somalia is a hoax. 

Meanwhile, the United Nations, not the United States, must make an equal
effort on the political front to create a government in Somalia. An
individual or special body should be assigned this task. There are
experienced, competent, committed Somalis to work with. Without this
element, the military forces - including at least some Americans - will
either have to remain indefinitely or leave Somalia little better off
than before. 

Addressing the underlying problem is probably the most difficult step,
not because it is either mysterious or too expensive, but because once
the gruesome pictures fade, so does international concern. What has
happened in the last 30 years in Sahelian Africa is the result of a
well-meaning development strategy that turned out to be drastically
unfit for that arid environment, combined with rapid population growth.
Together these have caused a swift ecological collapse that has forced
people off the land into cities where there are no jobs, created more
than 10 million "environmental refugees" and made countries
ungovernable. Along with the refugees, tensions spread between states
too, as Kenya, already unable to meet Kenyans' needs, is now threatened
by Somali refugees 

Drought is not new in this region. Wildly variable rainfall is normal in
arid lands. What is new are the vast, repeating famines. These have come
because of the attempt to replace forms of land use that followed the
rains with settled agriculture, and because growing numbers of people
force farmers to reuse fallow land before it can recover. When this
happens vegetation disappears, agricultural productivity is lost, and
eventually the soil cannot absorb even the rain that does fall. As the
land loses its capacity to hold moisture, what was once a dry spell
becomes a drought. The process, called desertification, creates
desert-like conditions where they did not exist before. 

The decline can be reversed, and the link between drought and famine
broken. It requires investment in cropland, rangeland and forests,
economic policies that give farmers an incentive to produce and, over
the longer term, slower population growth. The funds required are modest
compared with the costs of not acting. In 1977 the United Nations
prepared an Action Plan to Combat Desertification. The estimated cost of
$2.4 billion per year was never raised. Ethiopia's share would have been
$50 million per year. Ethiopian famine relief in 1985 topped $500
million - and yet a million people died. The ratios in Somalia would be
comparable. 

Past failures and the choice for the future are as much the
responsibility of developing countries as of aid donors. Money spent on
arms cannot be spent on economic necessities. As the famine spread in
1984, Africa imported massive amounts of food but for the first time
spent even more on imported arms. 

The Somali crisis is a test case of whether post-Cold War rhetoric means
anything and of whether security can yet be understood in more than its
military dimension. The connections between civil war and lawlessness
and environmental breakdown run in both directions, and to be severed
they must be addressed at both ends. Trees cannot be planted, advancing
sand dunes blanketed with grass and irrigation canals cleared of silt
while clans and subclans battle. Nor can peace be kept or any government
stay in power for long while people watch their livelihoods turn to
dust. 

The writer, vice president of World Resources Institute, writes this
column independently for The Post. 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>WP   12/07 xxx  U.S. Officials Estimate Cost, Length of Somalia Mission

U.S. Officials Estimate Cost, Length of Somalia Mission; Humanitarian
Operation Seen Taking 2 to 3 Months 

By Kathy Sawyer 

Washington Post Staff Writer 

Administration officials, under pressure to clarify the limits of the
U.S. military mission in Somalia, said yesterday the humanitarian
operation will begin in "about two days," probably will last no more
than two to three months and could cost American taxpayers $300 million
to $400 million. 

The officials conceded, however, that a "few thousand" military
personnel in special construction, logistics, medical or other support
units might have to be left for a longer period in the African nation,
which has no effective government and in which thousands of people are
starving to death each month. 

The administration said earlier that an amphibious U.S. force will
remain off the coast of Somalia for an indefinite period. 

But Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney said the notion that the United
States, which is using its military to ensure the delivery of food
supplies to starving Somalians, will get bogged down in another
guerrilla war is "dead wrong. . . . If you are looking for the U.S. to
stay until all the problems are solved in Somalia, that is not going to
happen." 

He and acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, appearing on
television interview shows, both took issue with the U.S. ambassador to
Kenya, Smith Hempstone, who has warned that the Somalia operation will
become a "tarbaby," similar to Vietnam. 

In a cable sent to the State Department and published in this week's
issue of U.S. News and World Report, Hempstone argues that the
administration has underestimated the toughness of the warring Somali
clans, and that the United States has no vital interest in mounting a
military operation there. 

Eagleburger, on ABC's "This Week With David Brinkley," said most
administration officials believe Hempstone "probably exaggerated things
substantially." Cheney, on NBC's "Meet the Press," said  Hempstone
"didn't even want us to fly (relief) missions" that began in August.
Because warlords and their armed bands prevented delivery of most of the
supplies that landed in Somalia, President Bush last Friday ordered the
sending of 28,000 troops there, with orders to use "whatever force is
necessary" to ensure the delivery of food to the population. Officials
said the unprecedented mission could include disarming local warlords
and their gunmen. 

"We may well want to go in and round up troops or weapons," Cheney said.
"We might want to offer a bounty" to entice people to give up their
weapons, as was done in Panama, which the United States invaded in 1989
to oust strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega. 

Cheney said a preliminary "guess" at the cost of the two- to three-month
operation is $300 million to $400 million. Although Cheney declined to
say specifically when U.S. troops would begin landing, the Marine Corps
commandant, Gen. Carl E. Mundy, indicated on the Brinkley show that U.S.
troops of Operation Restore Hope will begin going ashore in Somalia in
"about two days." Although some administration officials said the
operation would begin Tuesday, military sources in the region predicted
the first troops would land Wednesday. 

The first troops ashore will be led by an amphibious strike force of
about 1,800 Marines, now waiting on ships off the coast of the East
African nation. Also standing by offshore is the aircraft carrier USS
Ranger, in case air cover is needed. 

About 16,000 members of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp
Pendleton, Calif., and 10,000 troops from the Army's light infantry 10th
Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., also were preparing for deployment
yesterday. The United States is acting under U.N. authorization and
other nations are expected to supply some troops to the effort. 

Mundy said the rules of engagement allow the Marines, if threatened, to
fire first if necessary to protect themselves rather than waiting to be
shot at. "We are prepared 

to take whatever measures we have to 

to achieve disarmament," Mundy said. 

He said Marine leaders are mindful of the lessons of Lebanon, where in
1983 a terrorist blew up the Marine barracks, killing 241 men. He noted
that Lt. Gen. Bob Johnson, "one of the successful battalion commanders
during the Lebanon crisis," is now the commander of the U.S. Joint Task
Force. "He's sensitive to the security requirements," Mundy said. 

Once the troops have stabilized what is now a country in anarchy, Cheney
and other officials said, the bulk of the American contingent is
expected to hand off the long-term peace-keeping mission to "blue
helmet" forces of the United Nations. 

The officials reiterated the administration view that the mission is a
morally urgent humanitarian one, which only the United States is capable
of mounting. 

National security adviser Brent Scowcroft, on CBS's "Face the Nation,"
said that a "few thousand" people in logistics and other support units
may remain in Somalia after combat troops depart because of that
country's lack of infrastructure. "There's no fuel, no water, everything
has to be brought in." He said further assessment will be needed to
determine "how much can just be turned over as we build it to supply our
own troops . . . and how much we will have to maintain ourselves." 

Scowcroft said he believes the main combat forces will be required only
for "a matter of weeks rather than a matter of months." 

He said: "Our job is strictly limited. It is not to solve all of the
problems of Somalia, but in the process of doing this (operation), we
can hopefully change the environment so that other things can take
root." 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>WP   12/07  Somali Premier: He Gets No Respect

By Caryle Murphy 

Washington Post Foreign Service 

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 6 - Omer Arteh Ghalib gets exasperated when
people say Somalia has no government. Why is everyone ignoring him? 

Here he sits with the title of prime minister of Somalia, in daily
contact by satellite phone with his president back home, and head of a
cabinet ready to take up the reins of power once the U.S.-led military
intervention is underway. 

"There is a legitimate government. Do not bury us alive. We're here,"
said Ghalib, 57, tall and lanky, with a salt-and-pepper goatee, during
an interview in Riyadh's luxurious Conference Palace where he has lived
in exile as a guest of the Saudi government for the last year. 

Ghalib has bombarded U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali with
letters on stationery that says "Office of Prime Minister-Mogadishu" -
demanding formal recognition of his government. (He also wrote a letter
to The Washington Post, in which he compared Somalia to the U.S. "Wild
West.") 

"We are so grateful and jubilant" about the U.S.-led intervention, which
"we are welcoming with open arms," Ghalib said in the interview, adding
that those who "may provoke the U.S.-led forces . . . should be
crushed." 

Ghalib served as Somalia's foreign minister in the 1970s under president
Mohamed Siad Barre and then spent six years in solitary confinement
after a falling out with the now-exiled Somali leader. After Siad
Barre's ouster in January 1991, an international conference in Djibouti
installed as interim president Ali Mahdi Mohamed, who named Ghalib prime
minister. 

But in selecting Ali Mahdi, a little-known, exiled Somali businessman
and hotelier, the Djibouti conference bypassed the leader of the final
military offensive of the United Somali Congress that captured Mogadishu
and toppled Siad Barre. Both Mohamed Farah Aideed and the United Somali
Congress, of which he was chairman, rejected Ali Mahdi's presidency. 

The ensuing power struggle between the two warlords erupted into an
artillery duel in Mogadishu last year that killed thousands of civilians
and exacerbated the effects of famine. 

Ghalib said he is in constant touch with Ali Mahdi by satellite phone,
and that his government should be the one that arriving U.S. forces
should deal with. 

"When you send such massive troops to a country, there must be a central
authority to deal with," he said. "That's why I'm saying, `Please, there
is a government. . . . We are there. Cooperate with us.' 

"President Bush and myself are not strangers to each other," Ghalib
added, recalling that they met when Bush was U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations. "I'm saying to my old friend, `Give me a farewell
present. . . . Cooperate with the government.' " 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>WP   12/07 xxx Somalis Without Guns Eye New Government; U.S. ...

Somalis Without Guns Eye New Government; U.S. Presence May Force
Reconciliation 

By Keith B. Richburg 

Washington Post Foreign Service 

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 6 -Every morning here in this violent capital,
about a dozen once-powerful men escape the chaos in the streets by
gathering in the posh and expansive living room of Abdullah Ahmed Addou,
Somalia's former ambassador to Washington. Sitting barefoot, they sip
tea, exchange the latest gossip, and discuss the prospects of forming a
future interim government in Somalia. 

Most of the men were either business leaders or senior officials of the
regime of Mohamed Siad Barre, Somalia's deposed dictator. Siad Barre's
last interior minister is a regular at the morning gatherings. So is the
past president of the Chamber of Commerce. Until they returned to
Somalia from exile last month, they held their daily talk sessions in
Cairo. "But we were powerless," said Addou. "Number one, we were out of
the country, and number two, we were not the ones with the guns." 

This group's luck might be about to change; the scenarios and
contingencies they have been debating for the last two years may get the
chance to be tested. With the imminent arrival of the first of up to
30,000 American combat troops here, the balance of power in Somalia is
set for dramatic change. 

The men with the guns - the warlords and their youthful, marauding
militiamen - who have held sway over a defenseless population for nearly
two years may finally be forced to retreat. And if an interim government
is to be formed, its members will likely be drawn from what remains of
Somalia's educated elite, the former politicians and businessmen such as
those who come to the daily informal gatherings. 

The goal of the U.S. military intervention has been described in
strictly humanitarian terms - to break the logjam in relief aid and take
food to the starving. President Bush, in his White House address Friday,
insisted, "We do not plan to dictate political outcomes." 

But many Somalis hope that the American soldiers, by taking away the
unchallenged authority of Somalia's warlords and gunmen, also will break
the political logjam that has stalled all previous attempts to
peacefully reconcile Somalia's myriad warring clan factions. 

"The world image is that Somalis are either looters or starving people,
but there are many good people in between and they could be used," said
Hussein Mursal, a Somali working with Save the Children Fund. "You might
ask why these Somalis didn't speak out before." The reason, he said, is
that Somalia's warlords "were big and they had guns. If the Americans
neutralize everybody with guns, then there could be an opportunity for
these people to speak out." 

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and senior White House
officials have spoken in recent days of the possibility of establishing
some kind of "transitional authority" in lawless Somalia, similar to the
U.N. transitional government now in place in Cambodia. But many educated
Somalis - from politicians and businessmen to relief workers like Mursal
- call foreign imposition of a government on Somalia unacceptable. 

"We are intimidated by these gunmen," said Mursal. "But we don't want to
change Somali warlords for foreign warlords." 

However, they said, the prospect of foreign powers installing a
government in Mogadishu may be the needed impetus to persuade the
warring clans to give way to a temporary administration of leaders not
involved in the current bloodletting. 

"Somalis are very nationalistic," said Addou, the former ambassador.
"Even though they welcome foreign forces, they say nonetheless it is
time to expedite the reconciliation." The U.S. military intervention
"will enhance the prospects for the various groups to come together," he
said. "All people need is stability. I think the Somalis will come
together and set up at least a temporary administration until there can
be elections." 

Addou said the best hope for peace was using the American intervention
to work for a resolution of the deadly power struggle between the two
factions of the United Somali Congress, represented by Somalia's premier
warlord, Mohamed Farah Aideed, and interim President Ali Mahdi Mohamed,
who have carved up this capital into armed camps. 

The United Somali Congress was the umbrella group that toppled Siad
Barre's regime in January 1991 but split when Ali Mahdi was named
interim president at an international conference in Djibouti. Aideed,
the organization's chairman and leader of the military offensive that
captured Mogadishu and caused Siad Barre to flee, refused to accept Ali
Mahdi's appointment and tried to oust him from power. 

Their rivalry for power flared into several brutal artillery duels
during 1991, the most vicious beginning in November 1991 and lasting
four months, leaving most of the capital in ruins and killing thousands
of civilians. The chaos in Mogadishu prompted the north of the country
to break away and declare independence as unrecognized Somaliland. The
fighting also worsened the famine in the countryside. 

"It's key," Addou said. "If we get Ali Mahdi and Aideed together, the
Somalia problem is solved." 



Osman Ato, a leading merchant closely allied with Aideed, said the
presence of U.S. troops here may force Aideed and Ali Mahdi to finally
come to terms. "There's enough evidence that things will change, because
of nationalism, because of the incoming troops," he said. But, he
warned, "imposing a solution will not solve anything - it will just make
things worse." 

Addou and others said that while the interim government can be made up
of noncombatants and Somali intellectuals, it still must have the
backing of all the warring factions to have any chance of survival. 

The major hurdle is in identifying the individuals who would serve in
such a government, since, in the words of Sam Toussie of the
International Medical Corps here, "There's no such thing as a neutral
Somali." 

One problem is that during the Siad Barre regime, a large number of the
country's intellectuals perished. "Siad (Barre) killed a lot of them,"
Toussie said. "National leaders at this time are hard to find." 

Another problem is that no Somali is free of the intricate network of
clans and subclans that defines society here. Addou, for example, said
that while he considers himself neutral, he is still identified as a
member of Aideed's Hawiye clan and the warlord's subclan, the Habr
Gedir. 

Some of the possible candidates for key roles in an interim
administration are also considered tainted by many Somalis because they
held a variety of key positions during the two decades of Siad Barre's
regime. Besides Addou, who was also a finance minister under Siad Barre,
there is Abdi Kasim Salad, Barre's former interior minister and a
regular at the daily tea-and-gossip gatherings; Gen. Mohamed Sheik
Osman, a former member of the ruling council; and Osman Ahmed Roble, a
former president of the Somali Chamber of Commerce. They are able to
meet every morning and talk politics for long hours, Addou said, because
"we have nothing to do - we have no employment." 

"Some of them are coming back," Ato said of the former Siad Barre
officials. "But I don't think anybody will give them such importance." 

Those who fled into exile during the recent civil war also are resented
by many Somalis who stayed here and survived the disaster. "The Somali
people suffered a lot, so a figure who has been abroad this period
cannot be trusted by the people," said attorney Hassan Scek Ibrahim of
the Somali Democratic Movement faction. "I stayed here," he said. "A man
who has been watching TV, enjoying The Washington Post and the
newsweeklies, to come here when the American forces impose security, he
cannot get the support of the population." 

"If the Americans come and work with the Somali nationals who are here -
the intellectuals - then that will make life easier for them," said
Mursal of Save the Children. "If they pick up those people from the
outside, it will be a disaster." 

He added, "If there is any kind of interim administration, it should be
through the Somali population who have been living here for the past 21
months through hell." 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>APn  12/07 0000  Effects of Incest on Women

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By J.L. HAZELTON 

Associated Press Writer 

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- It probably isn't surprising to hear that women who
were victims of incest as children are more likely to suffer disabling
psychiatric problems than other women. 

What is surprising is that little has been documented about the
long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse. 

Those were the findings of a study by Stephen Dinwiddie and Elizabeth
Pribor, researchers and teachers at the Washington University School of
Medicine in St. Louis. 

"This very basic descriptive study was designed to see if we can put
some numbers and some percentages on what is a general perception,"
Dinwiddie said. What Dinwiddie and Pribor learned in their study,
published earlier this year in the American Journal of Psychiatry, will
surprise few. 

"The impact of child psychiatric trauma is a very important factor in
the development of serious disorders in children and in adults," said
Linda Smith, a psychotherapist in the department of psychiatry at St.
Louis University Medical Center. 

There is a great deal of anecdotal literature that ties incest to
psychiatric problems, Smith said, but "it can be very helpful to put it
in the scientific arena." 

It's been difficult to research the prevalence and long-term impact of
incest and sexual abuse because the victims often feel shamed and
stigmatized. "These are people who have learned from a very young and
vulnerable age that you just don't talk about it," Dinwiddie said. 

By age 16, one woman in five has had sexual contact with a relative, and
one in three has had unwanted sexual contact with an adult, the
researchers said. 

In their study of 75 area women receiving psychotherapy, Dinwiddie and
Pribor found the 52 incest victims in that group each, on average, had
suffered seven psychiatric illnesses, more than twice the number
suffered by the 23 women who hadn't been sexually abused as children. 

The incest victims also suffered certain psychiatric disorders more
frequently than did the other women. 

The incest victims most often suffered a fear of public places, alcohol
dependance, depression, panic attacks or phobias -- all potentially
disabling and all highly treatable. 

While Pribor and Dinwiddie don't claim to have found a link between
severity of abuse and depth of illness, they did find that the women who
had been most severely abused had higher levels of anxiety-related
problems, like panic attacks and post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Despite results that seem to confirm assumptions, Dinwiddie remains
cautious.

"It's premature to try to propose some simple cause-and-effect
relationship between this kind of trauma and the development of mental
illness," he said. "It seems reasonable, but there are probably a number
of complexities." 

The researchers also learned that of the 24 women who previously had
received therapy, 21 weren't satisfied with their treatment. They said
their counselors dismissed sexual abuse as a possible reason for their
problems. 

Unlike their therapists, the women themselves "saw incest as something
massive, painful and terrible -- an issue important for them to
address," Dinwiddie said. 

In part because it can remove some of the stigma associated with incest,
therapists should ask everyone they treat if they've been sexually
abused, the researchers recommended. 

"If you don't ask, you won't find it," Dinwiddie said. "There are a lot
of people out there who are not reporting this." 

In his own practice, Dinwiddie said, "I no longer believe that I just
know through some mystical clinical sense which people I should be
asking." 

Phyllis Froehle, vice president of Voices In Action, an international
organization of incest and sexual abuse survivors based in Chicago,
agrees therapists must ask everyone about abuse. 

That's because of her own experience. Not until she was an adult did a
question from a therapist help her recall that she'd been sexually
abused as a child. 

Dinwiddie and Pribor now are studying men who were sexually abused as
children to see what psychiatric illnesses they may suffer and what role
gender plays in their experience. 

<<>>APn  12/06 1919  Helping Hand, Truckers Lighten Their Loads

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

MENOMONIE, Wis. (AP) -- When truckers get caught with overweight loads
of food at a weighing station on Interstate 94 near here, poor families
often benefit -- thanks to a state trooper. 

Wayne Wilson developed Operation Helping Hand after seeing excess food
from the trucks sometimes dumped into a ditch to rot so truckers could
get down to legal weight and get back on the road. 

It took months to cut through bureaucratic red tape, but Wilson
persuaded several government agencies and a civic club to organize
volunteers in this western Wisconsin town of 13,000 to gather the excess
food and give it to the Dunn County food pantry. 

"Even if we get one load a year and prevent a starving child from going
to bed hungry, it's worthwhile," the trooper said. "You really realize
where the need in this world is. Right here in our own community is
where it starts. ... This is what law enforcement is about." 

The 6-year-old program has been so successful that efforts are under way
to establish similar programs at all 20 state-operated weighing stations
in Wisconsin, said Highway Patrol Lt. Scott Morris. 

Operation Helping Hand has received 109 tons of food, ranging from
potatoes, carrots, watermelon and beans to frozen french fries, luncheon
meat and canned clams, Wilson said. 

Sue Nelson of the Dunn County Department of Human Services said Wilson's
brainchild furnishes about 10 percent of the food distributed to nearly
800 poverty-stricken families each year. 

<<>>RTw  12/06 1523  SOMALIA-FRANCE 

Health and Humanitarian Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner, an
enthusiastic backer of intervention in Somalia, said the operation was
only the start of a movement which would see further such multi-national
relief efforts around the world. 

"Those who protest  should be less impatient. Just a few weeks ago, the
world was letting these Somali children die. 

"I know one should intervene everywhere in the world but this is just a
start," he told TF1 television, clearly rejecting criticism from cabinet
colleagues as Joxe who said on Saturday there were even worse situations
elsewhere. 

Kouchner was speaking on his own return from Mogadishu where he oversaw
the unloading of a French ship loaded with rice donated by millions of
French schoolchildren. 

The minister, himself a disaster area doctor around the world for more
than a decade before being called to government, said his own next field
visit was to Yugoslavia. 

"It would be great to think that one could wage war against war there. I
know it's not as easy as for Somalia... but international intervention
is needed to end the disgusting killing there of Europe's Moslems," he
said. 

REUTER BE PI  <<>>RTw  12/06 1502  DEVELOPMENT AGENCIES URGE END TO THIRD WORLD ARMS FLOW

By Richard Walker 

ATLANTA, Dec 6, Reuter - International aid agencies meeting jointly have
concluded that most efforts to develop Third World nations will remain
ineffective unless rich nations stop selling and giving weapons to poor
countries. 

At the conclusion late on Saturday of a two-day conference here on
global development cooperation, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and
United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali also said lack of
cooperation among agencies and countries which aid Third World economic
development had repeatedly hampered development efforts. 

The aid specialists estimated that only 10 percent or less of the
assistance money intended for less-developed nations goes for "human
priority areas," including education, primary health care, sanitation,
family planning and nutrition. 

Much of the rest has been spent on weapons, said Boutros-Ghali, adding
that in Africa military budgets "take up a disproportionate share of
national budgets." 

Carter, who hosted the gathering at his presidential library complex,
predicted that companies that usually sell weapons to the U.S.
government "will be working very hard to sell them to the developing
world" to replace sales lost by Washington's military spending cuts. 

"There needs to be a restraint on sales or outright gifts of weapons,"
the former president said on behalf of the 150 participants. 

Representatives of the United Nations, the World Bank, various Western
and Third World governments, private foundations and universities were
represented at the conference on global development cooperation. 

In view of strained government finances and recession in the
industrialised nations, conference participants concluded there would be
no new money available for foreign aid in the near future and
development agencies must find better ways to spend the existing money. 

The conference specifically urged governments and private aid
organisations to form a single international task force to coordinate
Third World assistance and called for the scientific and professional
communities in industrialised countries to be enlisted more in
supporting development. 

"Global development cooperation is obstructed when national and
international agencies number in the hundreds and each goes its own
way," Boutros-Ghali said. 

Because various agencies might be jealous of their position in a joint
task force, Carter suggested that it be sponsored by a "neutral" private
group, such as the Ford Foundation or the Carnegie Corp. 

He said he would discuss the recommendations with the new U.S. secretary
of state as soon President-elect Clinton's transition team named its
cabinet. 

REUTER RLW JE  <<>>RTw  12/06 1131  BUSH CALLS YELTSIN TO DISCUSS SOMALIA - TASS

MOSCOW, Dec 6, Reuter - U.S. President George Bush called Russian leader
Boris Yeltsin on Sunday to talk about the situation in Somalia and other
international issues, Itar-Tass news agency said. 

Tass quoted a Russian presidential spokesman as saying the two men also
discussed various questions relating to bilateral relations. 

The United Nations said last week it would send a force to Somalia to
end looting of aid and intimidation of relief staff trying to contain
famine theatening a million people. 

Bush and President-elect Bill Clinton both sent messages of support to
Yeltsin last week before the opening of Russia's conservative supreme
legislature, which has mounted a series of attacks on the government and
its radical economic reforms. 

REUTER DML PI  <<>>RTw  12/06 0846  MOGADISHU'S ``BERMUDA TRIANGLE'' AWAITS U.S. MARINES

By Andrew Hill 

MOGADISHU, Dec 6, Reuter - One part of Mogadishu is called the Bermuda
triangle. The gunmen there say that you can go in, but you don't come
out. 

That is the kind of place and the kind of mentality an American-led
intervention force will have to deal with when it finally enters
Mogadishu. 

Bombed-out and gutted, Mogadishu is mile after mile of ruined houses and
wrecked lives awaiting rehabilitation that can only come with peace. 

Many areas, such as the Bermuda triangle and the Medina suburb, are
warrens concealing small armies of gunmen, bandits and thieves. 

"If you liked Beirut, you'll love Mogadishu," Washington's Ambassador to
Kenya wrote in a secret cable leaked by the U.S. media at the weekend. 

His ironic remark was meant to warn U.S. policy makers that American
troops could get bogged down in guerrilla war in the capital and
elsewhere. 

The major warlords dismiss such speculation. They need foreign troops in
areas they claim to control to bolster their authority and protect them
from attack by their rivals. 

But they are known to fear that attacks against the force by freelance
gunmen could upset their calculations and lead to their militias being
forcibly disarmed. 

No-one knows how many guns there are but most aid workers believe that
half the adult male population has a gun of some kind. 

They are easy to buy. On Sunday, you could purchase a Beretta automatic
pistol for $50 and a functioning assault rifle for about three times
that in the vast Bakara market in the centre of town. 

Bullets are expensive, about a dollar each. Every time a gunmen fires a
warning burst at a rival, $15 goes up in smoke. Another $15 is wasted
with the obligatory reply by the rival. 

Gunmen roamed the street on Sunday, as they have since chasing President
Mohamed Siad Barre from Somalia in January 1991 before turning their
guns on one another in a war that wrecked the nation and caused the
famine. 

Mogadishu is a museum of destruction. It is impossible to find a
building without a bullet hole. The militias have reduced the city to
rubble with artillery, mortar and gunfire. 

The $40 million American embassy, where the visiting troops might
usually expect to pay a call at some stage, is a blackened shell, its
miniature golf course an overgrown patch of wasteland. 

All the statues of Siad Barre were pulled down long ago. The monument to
Italian colonialism, the Arco di Trionfo Populare, looks like a shooting
range target in some demented fairground. 

The centre of town is now on the "green line" which divides the city
between warlords Mohamed Farah Aideed and his rival, self-styled
President Ali Mahdi Mohamed. 

There are no sandbagged barricades, just a few twisted chairs, an empty
filing cabinet and a discarded crankshaft or two to demarcate the
division. 

The main shopping street, once an elegant network of arcades where one
could walk in the shade and admire wealth behind the window fronts of
expensive shops, is a ruin. 

Waist-high weeds have pushed up between cracks in the pavements. Not a
shard of glass remains in any window. The store fronts are shuttered or
blackened by fire. 

The pretty Italian cathedral is shuttered and overgrown. The Croce del
Sud hotel, its name was synonymous with ice-cold clear water, good pasta
and crisp salads for generations, is a ruin. 

The seafront road which takes travellers there now winds its way past
buildings covered in mildew and emitting a smell of urine and garbage
that masks the salty smell of the Indian Ocean. 

The arriving soldiers can forget their road maps. There are no road
signs anymore, they have been stolen or blown up in the fighting the
city has hosted for about two years. 

No-one uses street names anymore anyway. Directions to visitors use
feeding centres or refugee camps as landmarks. 

"Go past fish camp, turn left at Mustaqlil camp, past UNICEF and the
road goes straight to Baidoa" might be the directions soldiers would
receive. 

Baidoa, 200 km (125 miles) to the northwest, is the epicentre of
Somalia's disaster in which up one million people are threatened with
death by starvation. Weekend violence there forced aid agencies to
evacuate their staff. 

REUTER AJH NJP  <<>>RTw  12/06 0655  ANGOLA WAR FEARS CHECK RETURN OF REFUGEES

By Judith Matloff 

CAZOMBO, Angola, Dec 6, Reuter - The threat of a new war has stemmed the
stream of refugees returning home to Angola after years abroad. 

Thousands gathered on the Zairean and Zambian borders. But UNITA rebels
and the government, who signed peace accords in May 1991 after 16 years
of civil war, now seem to be gearing up for a new fight. 

"I thought, finally, it was safe to come back." said Roberto Sining, 76,
who fled government air raids eight years ago. "But maybe it isn't." 

There is no sign of government troops in Cazombo, 1,000 km (600 miles)
inland from the South Atlantic. 

It has been firmly in UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence
of Angola) hands since a month before the peace accords. Refugees who
have come back say they all support the rebels. 

While tension is palpable in parts of Angola where clashes have broken
out, in Cazombo UNITA soldiers walk around relaxed, 

They approached a rare aircraft which landed on the dirt runway with
smiles and their guns at ease. 

But minefields in the surrounding country and buildings with roofs blown
off are reminders of the war. 

U.N. officials say the new conflict has virtually halted the flood of
people coming back. Only 90,000 of the 300,000 people expected to return
had done so since the peace accords. 

"At the moment many people are waiting to see what will happen," said
Ana Liria Franch, a representative in Angola of the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees. 

In this eastern corner of the country perhaps 8,000 have returned since
UNITA disputed results of September 29-30 elections and began a push
which has captured two-thirds the country. 

What they came back to is a town where no home has electricity or
running water. 

Malaria is common. Hope is rare. Most returning refugees live in tents. 

The red earth, covered with lush vegetation and mango trees, was
Angola's rice bowl during Portuguese colonial rule. 

Mines planted during the civil war still prevent people from venturing
into many fields to grow crops or build mud huts. 

UNITA soldiers guard a big tent by the air strip where the United
Nations stocks cooking oil, beans and other food for the hungry. 

Unlike many U.N. warehouses in Angola, this one has not been looted. But
townspeople broke into the office of a Lutheran aid group last month and
stole piles of clothing which they accused the local representative of
hoarding. 

A group of "deslocados" -- the displaced -- gathered around a visiting
journalist to air their anger -- no shoes, scant food, people crowded
"like pigs" 10 to a room. 

After long years in Zaire, many spoke better French than Portuguese. 

"Sometimes I think I should go back there," said Oliko John, 29, a
tailor who has no sewing machine for work to provide for his two small
children. 

REUTER JEM JA  <<>>RTw  12/06 0453  SOMALIA -  CARE NEGOTIATES RELEASE OF FOOD

It was not known how representatives of CARE, the international relief
agency handling the food, ended the negotiating deadlock over 20 tonnes
of food the gunmen had demanded as payment for moving it. 

There was speculation among Somalis on the quayside that the gunmen had
backed down in the knowledge that they will have to accept much stiffer
terms when the U.S.-led multinational force arrives this week. 

The United States has pledged more 20,000 tropps. Its allies, last
called on to back Washington against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein,
have pledged varying numbers of men with France offering a force of
2,000. 

The show of strength is unprecedented in Africa since a U.N. operation
to police Katanga in the Congo in the 1960s. 

It will pit some of the world's best-trained and armed men against
rag-tag batallions equipped with weaponry left over from Cold War
superpower rivalry. 

The convoy sped to northern Mogadishu, under the control of self-styled
interim President Ali Mahdi Mohamed. 

They raced along the shelled port road past wrecked houses on the
once-elegant corniche and disappeared over the "green line" which
separates the two warring halves of the capital. 

The haggling over the grain was typical of the kind of blackmail relief
agencies have had to contend with since the relief operation started in
earnest five months ago following an appeal by U.N. Secretary-General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali. 

The U.N. estimates that only about 80 per cent of the aid it 

has marshalled for Somalia actually reaches the mouths of the needy in
far-flung areas of the country because of a blockade of extortion by
gunmen in the capital. 

The port has been closed since it was shelled on November 7 by gunmen
from north Mogadishu jealous that grain being unloaded might be going in
unfair amounts to their rivals in the south, which is controlled by
warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed. 

No aid agency can operate without paying for the privilege of helping
the needy in Somalia. Gunmen demand payment for involvement in every
stage of the operation from unloading the ships to carrying it from
trucks to famine kitchens in the bush. 

Mogadishu's businessmen are cashing in on the intervention by charging
exorbitant prices to a vanguard invasion by Western journalists --
hundreds have arrived and more arrive daily. 

The going rate for a bed in a room without water, faltering electricity,
no food and mosquitos in a tumbledown hotel is $85 per day. 

A car and two armed guards costs $150, double outside city limits. 

Bemused aid workers watching convoys of television cameramen speeding up
and down the major streets have been deluged with requests for
accommodation they never had to deal with in months of fighting an
unprecedented famine. 

They have also been deluged with downpours of seasonal rain which turned
mogadishu's streets into rivers of chocolate-coloured mud moments after
the convoy left the port. 

REUTER AJH MR  <<>>WP   12/06  xxx Somali Citizens Want U.S. to Disarm Gunmen

Somali Citizens Want U.S. to Disarm Gunmen;Views of Americans Linked to
Views of Guns 

By Todd Shields 

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 5 - The women who bring their malnourished
children to a feeding center on the outskirts of this city each day have
heard talk that America is sending soldiers to their country. 

They seem unsure exactly what America is, or where it might be. But when
they explain what they want from America, they do not ask that its
troops take control of ports or escort relief convoys or otherwise
ensure the delivery of food aid. 

What they want, they say, is for the Americans to take away the guns
that Somalia's young men have wielded in more than two years of anarchic
civil warfare. 

"I'm very happy" with the prospect of U.S. troops, Fatuma Kassem said
today as she coaxed milk into her skeletal daughter at the feeding
center. When they come, "maybe they can collect the guns from the
looters and the other people fighting here." 

But the officials in Washington who are preparing the U.S. mission here
have resisted the idea of "If the Americans come, everything will be
okay here. They will collect the weapons." 

   - Abdi Shakur, former student   America playing any such role. 

"We're not in the business of disarming every teenager running loose in
the streets of Mogadishu," Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney said
Friday. 

Somalis interviewed here say people's attitudes toward the American
intervention seem to depend heavily on their attitudes toward guns. 

Young men of the militias have said a disarmament campaign would
threaten their livelihoods and security. But ordinary Somalis such as
Kassem - those without guns - appear to broadly approve of the
Americans' impending arrival because, they say, the Americans can take
the weapons. 

"The people need peace," a Somali office worker said. "They hope the
troops can bring stability." 

Abdi Shakur, a former student, was more emotional. "Last night, I
dreamed I was in America. I'm feeling very happy because . . . if the
Americans come, everything will be okay here. They will collect the
weapons." 

The preoccupation of unarmed Somalis here with the elimination of their
society's omnipresent guns is to be expected. Amid the clan fighting and
banditry of the past two years, Mogadishu has become one of the most
heavily armed cities in the world. 

The pervasiveness of arms has helped deepen the famine that now
threatens what the United Nations estimates is 2 million people with
starvation. 

Amid the misery, those with weapons are among the least likely to suffer
from hunger. 

Miriam Mohamoud, a former supervisor in the Ministry of Education, said
people she knew generally looked forward to the Americans' arrival. "We
would like peace," she said. 

"Even many people who have a gun, they don't think the solution is for
everyone to have one," said Mohamoud. "They would like to have another
way to make a living." 

For example, many of the young armed men who swagger about Mogadishu's
streets today are from the countryside, not the city, and lived rural,
sometimes nomadic lives before joining the fighting. "They were
camel-keepers," said Abdulkadir Yusuf, 32, a school teacher. 

Yusuf said he expects such gunmen to return to their lives in the bush
if the civil warfare is halted. "If America comes," he said, his own
home region may become "more secure, . . . better than now." 

Yusuf said his sister, brother and uncle were killed by an artillery
shell in November 1991. "If America has taken the guns," he said, "we'll
be free." 

Many ordinary Somalis, like Yusuf, tell personal tales of suffering
because of the guns and violence in this country. Kassem, the woman who
said she welcomes the Americans, said her family's ordeal began more
than a year ago, when armed looters seized the business stocks of her
husband, a petty charcoal merchant. Without capital to recoup the loss,
the family started a slide to penury and death. 

Kassem said "only one" of her children died of starvation, a 4-year-old
who perished eight months ago. 

Since then, her neighborhood, in a section of Mogadishu called Medina,
has become embroiled in persistent clan fighting. The conflict has
damaged what little commerce there was and encouraged banditry in
Medina, further impoverishing its people. 

Relief workers at the feeding center say they now often receive fresh
cases of severe malnutrition from Medina, including three who died last
week. Kassem's husband and two of their surviving children spend their
time waiting for meals at kitchens run by the International Committee of
the Red Cross. Kassem brings her year-old daughter to special feedings
arranged by the Irish aid group Concern. 

Among those making daily appearances at the feeding center is Tekado
Maaleb, a divorced woman from the agricultural region west of Mogadishu.
Her farm suffered repeated lootings by armed men as warfare swept back
and forth across the countryside, she said, and this year all four of
her children died. 

One month ago, she arrived in Mogadishu with her brother's 3-year-old
daughter, a child the size of a Western 1-year-old. The girl sat
absently with her aunt upon a woven mat, sitting quietly, holding but
not eating a piece of banana. 

Maaleb appeared confused when asked what she expected of the Americans.
Other women in the room stepped forward to offer an explanation. 

Maaleb thought for a moment, then made up her mind: "It is good," she
said. 

 Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>WP 12/06 xx How the World Sold Out Somalia; Humanitarian Agencies Failed

How the World Sold Out Somalia; U.N. Humanitarian Relief Agencies Failed
in Their Rescue Mission 

By Jeffrey Clark 

IN MOGADISHU in August, I met a starving 10-year-old boy with sticks for
arms, open sores and a sunken face who lay, agonized, in the burnt
remains of the American compound, somehow looking more horrific than all
the others. 

"Oh, God, what can we do about him?" I asked a Red Cross Nurse. 

"Nothing," she replied without emotion. "We cannot help this child." 

Today, that boy is long dead, just one of the 300,000 Somalians who have
succumbed to starvation. But the nurse's response has stuck with me. It
seems to epitomize the response of the international community to
Somalia in the past year and a half. 

A thousand people die each day; a quarter of all Somali children under
age 5 have perished. There is, in short, no precedent for such suffering
for such a large share of the population anywhere, and now no choice but
military intervention to alleviate that suffering. But it is important
to note, before bold military measures wipe it from our memory, that
this catastrophe could have been mitigated by an aggressive humanitarian
effort. When the history of the Somali tragedy is written, the United
Nations and its relief agencies, as well as the donor governments that
guide them, will not be treated kindly. The usually effective UNICEF,
the United Nations Development Program, the World Health Organization
and other U.N. agencies - each bungled their basic obligations in
Somalia. 

"It's so bad because we've let things simmer without paying proper
attention," says Trevor Page, now head of the U.N. World Food Program in
Somalia. "We've  had inexperienced people who don't know what they are
seeing, who don't know what the implications are and didn't blow the
whistle." 

The components of each organization's failure are similar:
uncoordinated, fitful efforts managed by unqualified U.N. personnel who
seemingly spent all their time in Nairobi. For instance, UNICEF caused
havoc by bringing food to arbitrary locations without notifying other
relief groups, thereby creating expectations but never again returning
despite the gathering of hungry people. Still, one can't blame UNICEF
alone. The office of the new U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian
affairs, responsible for coordinating the response to such emergencies,
failed to foster a comprehensive approach, which is supposed to be its
sole function. 

U.N. Undersecretary James Jonah ludicrously sought to excuse the U.N.'s
mishandling of the crisis by explaining that it was hard to keep U.N.
staffers in Somalia because, after all, "How do you cover them by
insurance? It is very difficult to find a credible insurance company to
cover them." 

The horror of Somalia's violence and anarchy has, of course, impeded
effective response to the famine. But these factors also serve as a
shield for the U.N.'s inexcusable absence during a critical period. Its
relief agencies, not for the first time, played a cynical game for most
of a year of denying knowing what they know and evading responsibility.
When the secretary-general's special representative in Somalia attempted
to impose responsibility, he was fired. 

The U.N., of course, is only what its member nations - especially the
major powers - make it, and there are few clean hands in this tragedy.
The U.S. State Department, for instance, should have pushed the
international community hard on Somalia a year ago - by then, it knew
well what was happening - and undertaken unilateral action to head off
the onset of famine. It might have used its excess logistical capacity
in the Gulf to get relief supplies to the area; it could have launched
its food airlift into Somalia earlier instead of waiting until August,
until so many had died. 

In addition, State could have pressed at the highest levels for an
effective U.N. coordinator for the massive relief task required. It
could have responded more generously to fundraising appeals by the
International Committee of the Red Cross. It could have urged more
private relief agencies to set up operations. These steps and others
were urged by the U.S. Committee for Refugees, Bread for the World and
other humanitarian agencies as early as May 1991; eventually these
measures were supported by the Agency for International Development.
Elsewhere in the administration, however, all efforts to make Somalia a
priority were overruled until President Bush stepped in this past July. 

The current deployment of troops indicates that the world is finally
getting serious about saving Somalian lives. But what other steps should
we be taking now to prevent future breakdowns in the world's
humanitarian response system? 

First, the international community should be prepared to intervene in
the internal conflicts and crises of countries as clear indicators of
tragedy emerge. When thousands of people are in grave danger from their
government or despite their government or because there is no government
- as in Somalia - then the world community needs a codified series of
escalating interventions ready to impose. 

The first level of intervention need not be the use of force. An early
step should be a declaration that those engaged in abuses are subject to
the jurisdiction of an international tribunal empowered to prosecute
crimes against humanity - an idea that the U.N. Security Council only
recently applied to the former Yugoslavia. In some places, the threat of
a lifetime of sanctions imposed by an international Nuremburg-like court
would be a major disincentive to perpetrators. 

When faster and more drastic measures are necessary, as in Somalia,
there should be clearly articulated and consistently applied criteria
for outside intervention. How is it that the U.N. intervened in
Kurdistan but not until now in Somalia? The U.N. or the international
community, however defined, should not intervene for thinly disguised
political reasons. Still, the world must answer the question: When do
human rights, including the right of survival, take precedence over
national sovereignty? There is no precise answer, but there should be a
recognized line. 

Finally, we must reexamine the role of the United States, a country
whose responsibility is enormous because its means are enormous. Our
relative affluence and our moral position enable us to do more than any
other government to force these questions to the top of the
international agenda. And who gains more than the United States by
having American ideals of basic human rights and the respect for the
rule of law globally enshrined? Do we not benefit by having millions of
people become less poor, less hungry, less desperate and more likely to
become our trading partners or political allies in a more stable world? 

The fact that new definitions, codes and agreements concerning
international interventions for humanitarian purposes are not in place
is disturbing. But even more disturbing is the fact that there is no
coherent or sustained leadership to put them in place. This process
cannot be delayed. We are already seeing the frustrations of the
international response to the Somali crisis repeated in Mozambique,
Bosnia, Sudan, Tajikistan and elsewhere. 

Yes, the United States is now showing leadership by sending troops into
Somalia. But this is also the moment for America to lead a wholesale
reform of the U.N. so that, next time, 300,000 people won't have to die
before nations find the will to act. 



Jeffrey Clark, a consultant to the U.S. Committee on Refugees, has
worked on Horn of Africa issues for much of the last decade. He was
previously director of Project Africa at the Carter Presidential Center.


 Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>WP   12/06 xxx The Guns of Mogadishu;Warlords' Weapons Pose Challenge

The Guns of Mogadishu;Warlords' Weapons Pose Challenge for U.S. Force 

By Keith B. Richburg 

Washington Post Foreign Service 

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 5 - Businessman Osman Ato, closely allied with
Somalia's preeminent warlord and secure in his urban villa behind high
walls and a ring of armed guards, reached down to pat the pistol he
always keeps in his waistband. 



"The reason I need this gun is that I feel insecure," he said. Referring
to the U.S.-led military force being sent to Somalia to ensure that
warlords and their armed bands no longer block food aid from reaching
the country's starving millions, Ato said: "We don't ask the Americans
to take on the role of disarmament. I am not going to give up my gun." 

Outside, across a rubble-strewn lot, Ato showed off a Chinese-made 85mm
field artillery gun protecting his property. The gun was antiquated and
rusting, but "it's very effective, I assure you," Ato said. "I don't
want to be on the receiving end." 

In a garage one block away, past a checkpoint of twisted metal, Ato's
workmen were busy hacking the tops off old Toyota Land Cruisers and
Range Rovers and mounting them with heavy weapons. The finished products
- Mad Max-style vehicles known here as "technicals" - roam the streets
throughout this capital city. Since Mogadishu slid into chaos last year,
Ato's factory has turned out more than 100 such vehicles, he said, and
there are at least 100 garages like his, with similar production rates. 

Ato's arsenal, and the importance he attaches to it, reflect one of the
most significant potential conflicts awaiting the U.S.-led multinational
force being dispatched by the United Nations after a smaller
peace-keeping contingent proved unable to keep warring factions from
blocking aid deliveries. Among the country's warlords and young gunmen,
there is the widespread feeling that  American combat troops are welcome
to come as "a friendly force" whose mission will be limited to feeding
the starving, but that they should not underestimate the gunmen's
capability or resolve. The men who now are the only power in a country
with no government would like to be consulted and included in the U.S.
military game plan. 

"There are more arms hidden than they can imagine," Ato said. "They can
take Mogadishu, certainly. (But) if they think they can take things in a
couple of hours, they don't understand the situation." If U.S. forces
attempt to land in the city without first securing agreement from the
gunmen of the dominant United Somali Congress, he said, "they are
looking for trouble." 

If American troops do find trouble, it will come in the form of outmoded
weapons like the old Chinese artillery piece. Mogadishu's bizarre,
mismatched arsenal includes small tanks, obsolete recoilless rifles,
antiaircraft guns mounted atop jeeps and a dizzying assortment of
assault rifles and grenade launchers stockpiled during more than two
decades of military assistance from both East and West. 

The weaponry of Somalia's armed factions appears to be no match for a
well-trained division of American ground troops with night vision
capability, protected in armored personnel carriers and amphibious
landing vehicles and operating with air support from helicopter
gunships. Accordingly, American firepower may partially account for the
surprisingly conciliatory tone taken so far by Mohamed Farah Aideed, the
warlord who lays claim to most of the capital and Somalia's western
reaches, and who at least nominally controls most of the gunmen visible
on Mogadishu's streets. 

So far, the gunmen themselves are saying only that they intend to obey
whatever orders they receive from their superiors - even if that
eventually means laying down their arms. 

"Americans? Okay, no problem," said Ahmed, 20, a United Somali Congress
gunman in bluejeans, picking at his thick hair with a fork-comb and
chewing narcotic  qat while leaning against a camouflage-painted,
chopped-down Land Cruiser mounted with guns and a rocket launcher. "It
depends on our leader, General Aideed." 

"We like Americans because they are keeping the peace," said his
barefoot colleague, Ali, 35, as he bit off another qat leaf and twirled
it around in his cheek. "We are only doing what our leader tells us to
do." 

Dealing with the roving gunmen - many of whom are only loosely
affiliated with the United Somali Congress - poses one of the trickiest
questions for American forces on the ground here, a question causing
deep anxiety among relief workers who complain that they have not been
consulted about the U.S. plans. Right now, aid workers cannot move
through the streets without carloads or convoys of "security escorts,"
and it is unclear whether American troops will view these gunmen as a
potential threat or simply as a fact of life in this violent capital. 

"In relation to our technicals, our gunmen, what's the American policy
going to be?" asked UNICEF spokesman Ian MacLeod. "When I travel, I have
to travel with gunmen. Will the Americans allow that? If not, will they
replace them? It "If they think they can take things in a couple of
hours, they don't understand the situation." 

   - Osman Ato, Somali businessman   seems bizarre if a large American
contingent is in here and I still have to walk around here with a
gunman." 

U.S. officials have not said specifically how American troops will deal
with the gunmen, but Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney told reporters
Friday that the forces dispatched to Somalia will be allowed to take
"preemptive action" against anyone posing a threat to their safety or
that of relief workers. 

In the state of anarchy that has gripped Somalia since the United Somali
Congress toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in January 1991, this
country's plentiful guns have provided young men with their only
livelihood. 

Some have taken up arms to steal food destined for Somalia's starving
masses - the kind of looting that President Bush has pledged to stop.
Others, because the looting and the constant climate of violence have
created a demand for protection, make their living as ostensible
security guards. They too are often seen as no more than bandits,
extorting increasingly large sums from aid workers and journalists for
providing "protection." 

Ahmed Osman, an 18-year-old with an AK-47 assault rifle slung over his
shoulder, has stood vigil outside the villa of the U.N. Development
Program for more than a year. The youngest member of his security team
is 14-year-old Hassan Abdi, who wears an army jacket and wields his own
AK-47. Neither young man has attended school in more than two years. 

"If the circumstances allow it, we will just give the Americans the
guns," said Mohamed Hassan Mahad, 21, another security guard hired by
the United Nations. 

Observers in Somalia and abroad have said there is little long-term hope
of getting the young gunmen off the streets unless the country's
shattered economy can be resuscitated and jobs provided for the idle
youths. That, they say, may be the hardest task in reconstructing what
is left of this country. 

But some relief agency officials say that finding work for them in the
near term is simple. "There are hundreds of thousands of jobs," from
filling potholes in the shell-pocked streets to removing garbage to
clearing the rubble from buildings leveled by mortars, MacLeod said. "If
every American soldier puts down his gun and picks up a shovel, then
that sets an example." 

Some relief workers and Somalis have suggested that a program be
launched to buy back weapons for cash or food. "The use of force by the
Americans might solve the problem," said a Somali businessman and
property owner who asked not to be named. "But buying them back might be
the answer." 

Already, the mere news this past week that the United States was
offering troops to the peace-keeping effort here has caused a drop in
the price of firearms on Mogadishu's notorious street market. An AK-47
that sold for about $200 several weeks ago can now be bought for half
that price. The less popular M-16 costs even less. Some relief workers
have suggested that the looming threat of disarmament has made buying
guns - at least buying new ones - less popular. 

The Associated Press added: 

The United Nations and relief agencies began withdrawing foreign workers
from Baardheere and Baidoa, two towns hardest hit by Somalia's famine,
because of heightened dangers posed by roving gunmen. 

"Security just went all to hell in Baidoa today," said Rick Grant, a
spokesman for CARE International, which handles most U.N. food shipments
in Somalia. "What passes for a local police force evaporated overnight,
and the regional governor locked himself in his house. The town is full
of technicals." 

Grant said much of Aideed's militia had returned to Baidoa from the
countryside "hungry and looking for food. They appeared to be on a
rampage." 

 Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>WP   12/06 xxx  Somalia: Reality, Rationalization and Politics

By Charles Paul Freund 

VIRTUALLY THE first words spoken by President Bush, when he addressed
the country Friday about sending troops to Somalia were of the "shocking
images" of starvation that for weeks have been haunting Americans.
Skeletal children and their helpless, hungry families appeared to be
dying before our eyes. "The people of Somalia," said Bush, "especially
the children of Somalia, need our help." 

The president went on, in the course of his brief remarks, to enunciate
what could be taken as a Bush Doctrine of America's role in a
de-ideologized world. It occurs in one of his subordinate clauses:
"(S)ome crises in the world cannot be resolved without American
involvement," he said. "American action is often necessary as a catalyst
for broader involvement in the community of nations." 

"Only the United States," he added, has the global reach to place a
large security force on the ground in such a distant place quickly and
efficiently and, thus, save thousands of innocents from death." 

This is a remarkable statement: It attempts to define a policy free of
political interest. As a response to images of appalling human
suffering, that would seem not only appropriate but necessary. But there
is another dimension to these images that we are, thus far, choosing to
ignore. Whether it is in the president's statement or in much of the
discussion in the print and electronic press last week, we are reacting
to this imagery as if it does not have a political context, whereas in
fact it does. This is political imagery: atrocity pictures. 

The fact that the pictures from Somalia are political doesn't mean that
the United States shouldn't play a role there. But the pretense that
they are not political is the source of an enormous amount of confusion
about that role, its implications and its applicability elsewhere in the
world. It also raises questions about the relationship between American
political decision-making and the structure of the information that can
influence it. 

The situation in which the United States is intervening, under United
Nations auspices, has been defined by this imagery in more or less the
following fashion: Millions of innocent people face starvation because
supplies sent to them cannot be delivered by relief agencies. The reason
for that is, in the capital city of Mogadishu at least (where much of
the footage is coming from), the presence of marauding gangs who hijack
the supplies and threaten the lives of relief workers. The actions of
these armed gangs are made possible, in turn, because of ongoing civil
war being waged by Somalia's warlords. There is no central authority;
there is only chaos. 

In terms of cause and effect, the story's narrative is backwards; this
is, in other words, a story defined by its emotional impact. Its center
is the overwhelming tragedy of starvation, the footage of which is
extremely powerful. 

But the actual factors shaping this tragedy become extremely fuzzy
almost immediately. Few people are interested in the internal politics
of Somalia, and not one person in a thousand is likely to be able to
tell you, after a week of discussion about American intervention, who
these warlords are, how many are competing for power, what if anything
any of them stand for politically, how well armed they are, what part of
the country they are operating in, what might make them stop fighting
among themselves, nor the answers to any of a dozen other questions that
may relate directly to Somalia's political reality, and potentially to
America's intervention in it. It is as if Somalia's tragedy were a
natural disaster, without perpetrators. 

The president's statement Friday is another chapter in this narrative.
Bush cast the United States as if it were the Red Cross with a Pentagon.
Perhaps that is what a great power should be, but in fact the United
States remains a political force that, in its every action, operates
among other political forces. 

Thus, much of the confusion about what the U.S. military will actually
do in carrying out its mission. Will it, in assuring the distribution of
food, which is a humanitarian function, also disarm any of the warring
clans, a political act? Will it attenpt to assure stability in the
country, which is arguably both. If so, at whose expense? Is the United
States willing to make such calls? On what basis? Is there a
humanitarian basis available? 

The question of whether the United States might also be willing to offer
humanitarian intervention in such places as Bosnia, has come up
repeatedly in the course of the week. In fact, the question is
disingenuous. Bosnia is also the source of depressing footage of human
misery. But Bosnia's imagery exists in a clear news narrative of
political cause and effect. That doesn't make it palatable, or even
tolerable, but it does make it clear that intervention there would
constitute a political act, with political consequences. 

Somalia's politics may be regarded as comparatively trivial, and perhaps
rightly so given the magnitude of its plight. But these politics are not
non-existent, and it is not merely delusional but potentially dangerous
to pretend otherwise. 

That danger doesn't necessarily lie in the military situation American
forces will face in Somalia. It's not unreasonable that, as Pentagon
spokespersons have suggested, armed gangs and warring Somalia warlords
will find 28,000 disciplined American troops, along with other forces,
entirely intimidating, and that the military role will be as Colin
Powell has described it: a case of "the cavalry riding to the rescue." 

The danger lies elsewhere. Atrocity imagery is among the most powerful
political weapons of the 20th century; sentimentalizing it is a mistake.
Because of the intense emotional reaction it invites, it has been
continuously abused as a device to sway opinion, to support military
action, to engender hatred; it is the central rhetorical device of
modern manipulation. 

Its ultimate value lies in the manner in which viewers or readers in
fact manipulate their own thinking. One either seeks a way to rectify
the horrors, real or otherwise, with which one is confronted or, when
these atrocities are being committed in the viewers' name, to
rationalize them. 

Television coverage of warfare has been the source of enormous conflict
between the press and the military. It has made the dissemination of
atrocity imagery, as in the Vietnam and Gulf Wars, an uncontrolled
event, affecting the emotional content of homefront support. If we find
ourselves viewing imagery of American soldiers engaged against armed
teenage Somalis, the political nature of Somalia's footage will reveal
itself. The images of Somali starvation may well be followed by other
equally heart-rending images - perhaps in Armenia, or Cambodia or
Liberia - appearing in a political context that presents similar
conflicts and confusion about the nature of the event we are watching
and our potential role in it. Now that the rules of American involvement
in the world have altered ideologically, the last thing we need is to
spring a rationalization trap on ourselves. 

Charles Paul Freund writes frequently for Outlook. 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>WP   12/06  xx   A Short-Term Commitment Is Not Enough

By John Lewis 

The situation in Somalia is unlike anything else in modern history. I
recently traveled to Somalia with several of my congressional
colleagues. We saw suffering, misery and starvation on a scale that is
incomprehensible to those who have not seen it with their own eyes. 

Perhaps the most dramatic moment of my visit was meeting a mother who
carried her toddler daughter in her arms. The child had literally
withered away. There was nothing left to this little girl but skin and
bones. She barely had strength to move her head or her limbs. I looked
at her, and I was stunned. How could this be? How could this happen? I
still think about that little girl, and I wonder if she survived. If she
did, it would be a miracle. 

I was deeply moved by that little girl and by the many children I met. I
was moved not only by their suffering but also by their spirit and their
ability to smile and laugh in the midst of all this desperation. When we
reached out to them, they reached back. For them, and for all the
Somalis, I am driven to find a way to put an end to the suffering. 

I returned from Somalia believing that the United States can and should
take a leadership role in the United Nations to help solve this tragedy.
Therefore, I supported President Bush's decision to send U.S.
peacekeeping troops as a part of an international force. I believe we
have a moral obligation to help the people of Somalia. I also believe we
should not back away from committing ourselves to work with the United
Nations in helping to restore the government in Somalia. 

We cannot just put out the fire. We must also rebuild the building. As
much as I hope that our troops will be able to restore order and then
turn over the longer-term peace-keeping duties to other international
forces, I believe that our commitment and attention to Somalia cannot
lessen after U.S. troops leave. The United States must take the lead in
the United Nations by supporting the presence of peace-keeping troops
and by bringing warlords and clan leaders together under U.N. aegis to
work out a political solution. 

The country is in chaos. There is no government, no sanitation and no
order. Young boys with machine guns who belong to no particular group
roam the country. Multiple clans are fighting each other, and different
warlords control different parts of the country. No one is safe. 

The situation had deteriorated ever since Siad Barre, dictator of
Somalia for 21 years, fled the country. Barre used animosity between
clans to strengthen his rule. The damage from this divide-and-conquer
strategy and from the ensuing chaos will not be easy to solve. 

Over and over again we heard from relief workers that the most important
problem in Somalia is the lack of security for the humanitarian relief
effort. Food and supplies cannot be safely transported to the people and
places in need. Relief workers risk their lives every day just to feed
the starving Somalis because there is almost no security for them. 

The United Nations must restore order to Somalia. With the end of the
Cold War, the United Nations is entering a new era. Somalia represents
the type of problem the international community will face in this new
world. I believe it is appropriate that these problems be solved
collectively by the community of nations rather than by an individual
country. 

Unfortunately, the United Nations has been slow to respond to the crisis
in Somalia. U.N. agencies are not effectively coordinating their relief
efforts, and private relief organizations have expressed frustration
with the lack of U.N. leadership. The United Nations is having
difficulty expanding its responsibilities. As the only remaining
superpower, the United States must take a leadership role and work with
the U.N. to help it develop the ability to cope with Somalia and similar
problems elsewhere in the world. 

If we simply allow the situation to deteriorate, I believe the whole
region is threatened. Kenya, for example, is burdened with refugees from
Sudan and Somalia as well as with its own drought victims. Several other
countries in Africa face famine and civil strife. In addition, there is
the threat that religious fanatics may gain a greater foothold n these
countries that are in chaos. 

Today the crisis is in Somalia. Tomorrow it could be Mozambique or the
Sudan. However, if we can help the U.N. adjust to its post-Cold War
role, it can respond to situations around the world before they reach
these tragic proportions. 

I do not take this position lightly. I know this is an important
commitment by the United States, and every time a crisis in the world
arises I do not necessarily want our young men and women put in harm's
way. However, I believe U.S. involvement can make a difference in
Somalia, and so we must become actively involved. What is happening in
Somalia is an affront to humanity. When people are denied food and
shelter, when their human rights are violated, none of us can stand by.
An estimated 300,000 people have already died. Another 1.5 to 2 million
are at great risk. We cannot stand by while hundreds of thousands of
people - including the very young - suffer and die. 

There are no easy answers. However, the United States, working with the
community of nations, can and should help the people of Somalia. The
threat to human dignity there is a threat to all of us. We are one
community - the world community. We cannot let this continue to happen. 

he writer, a Democratic representative from Georgia, returned on Nov. 21
from leading a congressional delegation to Somalia. 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  <<>>APn  12/05 1932  Somalia-Families

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By BRIGITTE GREENBERG 

Associated Press Writer 

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) -- Explaining "why Daddy is going to
Somalia" was the hardest mission Sgt. Lee Cook, a 10-year veteran of the
Marine Corps, says he has ever faced. 

"I started preparing them six months ago, telling them there was a
possibility that Dad might have to go over there to help those children,
the starving people," Cook said. The father of a 6-year-old boy and
4-year-old girl, Cook handles aviation ammunition at the Marine Air
Corps Station in Tustin, about 35 miles south of Los Angeles. 

"The kids, they see the pictures on television, so I tell them that's
who I'm going to be helping," he said. "I think they understand." 

Cook, 31, is assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force,
headquartered at Camp Pendleton. President Bush on Friday called up
16,000 members of the unit to secure Somalia's major ports and airports
and to help deliver famine aid now being stolen by roving armed gangs. 

Cook spent Saturday morning taking his son, Terry, to karate lessons,
and in the afternoon he put up Christmas lights at home as 6-year-old
Terry and 4-year-old Racquel watched. 

Cook expects to be called at any time. He worries that his wife, Staff
Sgt. Detra Cook, could also be sent to Somalia. 

If that happens the children would go to Detra's parents' house in
nearby Riverside. 

"Hopefully, it won't come to that," said Detra Cook, 30, who oversees
maintenance of equipment for the 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton.
"I would rather he go than I go. It's easier for me to stay because our
son's in school."

Among his preparations, Cook has increased his life insurance policy
from $100,000 to $200,000 and updated his will. 

Detra Cook has gathered pamphlets from base officials on how to talk to
children about the deployment. Camp Pendleton also is planning a
counseling session with military wives on Sunday. 

Cook recently returned from a six-month mission aboard the USS Tarawa
that included flying into Somalia by helicopter to deliver famine relief
food and medicine. 

"I'm surprised it's taken the United States this long to get involved
because the situation over there is really bad," he said. "Everyone has
guns. The people were so desperate for food that a lot of times the
helicopters couldn't land because the people would run up and try to
pull them down." 

<<>>UPn  12/09 0029  Clinton says foreign policy will play big role

By LORI SANTOS 

WASHINGTON (UPI) -- President-elect Bill Clinton conceded he "will be
forced" to spend more time than he wants on foreign affairs even as he
pressed Democrats on the centerpiece of his winning campaign: plans to
right the economy. 

After meeting Tuesday with Democratic lawmakers on both sides of Capitol
Hill, Clinton also expressed doubt the nation was recovering from the
prolonged recession despite some recent positive fiscal signs. 

"There is no evidence that we are really coming out of this," he told a
news conference. "We are no where near knowing that this short- term
recession, which has gone on agonizingly long, is in fact over or we're
coming out of it." 

Clinton made the same case earlier in the day in a speech to Gannett
newspaper executives, warning that "the evidence is more mixed than is
sometimes said," and seeming to make the case for continued work on an
economic stimulus program along the lines of what he promised during the
campaign. 

The Arkansas governor denied, however, that he was pushing just yet for
an emergency stimulus package that would add to the deficit, against his
campaign promise, at least for the first year. 

"No, I didn't say that," he told reporters. 

But although the economy and his promised legislative agenda dominated
his talks with the key committee chairman in the House and Senate, as
well as a new Democratic freshmen class elected with him, the question
of American military action in Somalia dominated the news conference as
U.S. troops prepared to enter the East African nation. 

Clinton reiterated his support for President Bush's decision to commit
U.S. servicemen to guarantee food supplies to thousands of starving
Somalis, and told reporters he was "not asked to help in making this
decision" nor would that have been appropriate. 

"George Bush is president of the United States," he said. 

Clinton, who will inherit the operation when he is sworn in as president
Jan. 20, also held out the possibility he may order troops to
participate in future such humanitarian operations. 

"I wouldn't rule it out," he said. 

He also noted that during the campaign he had scored Bush for putting
foreign policy over domestic considerations but said he believed that
both must be handled in light of the world leadership role that "only
the United States can play." 

"I believe our administration will be forced to spend a lot of time on
foreign policy -- whether we want to or not," he said. "I have two
choices. We can either try to focus on these problems, get ahead of them
... at the same time focusing much much more energy on rebuilding the
American economy." 

"Or we can ignore it for a while, wait for it to explode," he said. "And
I might have to spend all my time on foreign policy. I don't want that
to happen."

Clinton's trip to Capitol Hill marked his second such visit since the
Nov. 3 election to try to build a coalition for his policies and end the
gridlock in Congress that dominated Bush's term. 

In town for just over 24 hours, he met first with the full House
Democratic congressional team before sessions later with key House
leaders and freshmen members. 

Beginning the day with a jog to the foot of the Capitol in the chilly
pre-dawn, he also met in the afternoon at the Supreme Court with Chief
Justice William Rehnquist, who will swear him in, and with transition
planners. 

He later attended a dinner at the moderate Democratic Leadership
Council, from which many of his domestic ideas have been formed. 

Clinton thanked the group which produced some of his strongest
supporters and in his brief remarks touched on some of the moderate
domestic views that brough him victory in November. He was joined at the
affair by many members of Congress and transition officials.
Entertainment at the $1,500-a-plate affair were entertained by folk
singer Judy Collins. 

Speaking in the morning to the newspaper group, Clinton made a public
plea for cooperation on Capitol Hill, warning that the American people
demanded it. 

"The difficulties we face are not unmanageable," he said. "What's been
killing this country is that we have practiced the politics of blame
instead of responsibility." 

And his message appeared to have been warmly received again among the
lawmakers, as he stood flanked by congressional leaders at the end of
the day and claimed he already had achieved half of what he had "hoped
to do in our consultations with Congress." 

Senate Democratic leader George Mitchell of Maine, still resisting the
president-elect on some of his plans, joined in the chorus of good will
predicting "a productive working relationship in the coming Congress." 

And House Speaker Thomas Foley of Washington added: "I can predict we
will have an enormously successfuly legislative session." 

Vice President-elect Al Gore, who unlike previous occasions when he
stood silently on the sidelines, interjected one of his own responses
during Clinton's news conference, referred to his pronouncement last
time that he could hear gridlock loosening in the nation's capital. 

"Today you could hear the sound of gears shifting and wheels beginning
to move," he said at the close of the amiable talks. 

Earlier, after Clinton's first round of meetings, Rep. Charles Schumer,
D-N.Y., said "I think he's (Clinton) preparing everybody for the heavy
lifting that's going to have to occur in the first six months. " 

Schumer added, "I got a feeling he came here with a set idea of where he
wants to go and what he wants to do...And he won people over." 

And Rep. Charlie Rose, D-N.C., said, "It was mostly a love-in that this
place hasn't seen in an awful long time." 

Copyright 1992 United Press International   <<>>