U.S. Downplays Deployment of Marines Off Somalia Coast

The Bush Administration rushed to quell rising international concern Wednesday about its deployment of 2,400 Marines off the coast of Somalia, insisting that the force is not there to confront armed Somalian gangs interfering with aid shipments.

“The United States is not going to intervene in support of any faction in Somalia, nor do we intend to become Somalia’s policemen,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. “Our role continues to be to support the United Nations’ efforts to promote dialogue and reconciliation.”

The U.S. assurances came after the United Nations’ special envoy to Somalia said he disapproved of the deployment of the Marines and warned that it could upset delicate negotiations with Somalia’s warlords on the introduction of 3,000 additional U.N. troops to protect relief supplies.

The Pentagon announced late Tuesday that President Bush has ordered four U.S. amphibious ships, with the Marines aboard, to take up positions off the Somalian coast. The troops, based at Camp Pendleton, are equipped with the helicopters and landing craft typical of a Marine expeditionary force.

The task force was ordered to support the U.S. airlift of 500 Pakistani soldiers, operating under the U.N. flag, with radio communications and emergency rescue capabilities, not to mount a landing on Somalian soil, Bush Administration officials said. But the U.N. envoy, Mohamed Sahnoun, described the naval task force as “overkill,” setting off a rash of worries at the United Nations.

Reports by NBC News that U.S. Air Force commandos also were being dispatched to Somalia further fueled speculation. Pentagon officials explained Wednesday that a total of five Air Force “combat control specialists”--equipped with radar and radios--will be put ashore briefly at Mogadishu’s airport to act as air-traffic controllers for the incoming flights of Pakistanis.

The move comes as Sahnoun is struggling to conclude a deal with Somalia’s warlords to send the 3,000 additional U.N. troops to Somalia to guard food convoys and distribution areas outside Mogadishu.

Food shipments have been raided regularly by armed bands, which have ruled patches of territory since Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre fled the country in January, 1991. In the absence of a central government, gangs have plundered storehouses and held up food convoys.

On Monday and Tuesday, U.S. transport planes brought an advance party of 60 Pakistani soldiers to Mogadishu. The rest of the Pakistani troops are to arrive over the next 10 days.

Any engagement on land by U.S. troops would radically change the political equation in Somalia. The leaders of Somalia’s armed gangs would almost certainly respond by blocking further operations by the United Nations. Diplomats and relief officials say that would put the whole effort in jeopardy and allow millions of Somalis to die of starvation.

But while maintaining that the substantial force of U.S. military personnel “could always” be sent into Somalia if necessary, Pentagon officials took pains Wednesday to downplay the significance of the deployment. They noted that the presence of Marines on the ships is largely incidental to the central task, which is to serve as a seaborne control tower for the transport flights.

They added that the ships also would provide a seagoing helicopter pad for rescue choppers in the event that a U.S. transport plane malfunctions during the lengthy flights.

Only the aging C-130 transport plane, which has a limited range, can land at some of Somalia’s smaller airfields, and U.S. military planners are concerned that a plane could malfunction during the 2,300-mile trip--all over water--from Karachi, Pakistan, to Mogadishu.

The five Air Force personnel are to remain aboard the amphibious ship Tarawa for most of the roughly two weeks it is expected to take to transport the Pakistanis to Somalia. As U.S. transport aircraft approach the coast of Somalia, Pentagon officials said, the Air Force communications specialists will be dropped by helicopter at the airport in Mogadishu, where they will remain long enough to give U.S. pilots their final landing instructions.

Times staff writers Norman Kempster, in Washington, and Michael Hiltzik, in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report.