U.N. Chief Wants U.S. to Disarm Somalis : Goals: He says officials raised no objection to his request that mission go beyond famine relief.

Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali revealed Friday that he has asked President Bush to order American-led troops in Somalia to disarm the warring Somali factions before pulling out of the ravaged African country.

Despite news reports that the Administration is upset by the request, Boutros-Ghali said in an interview that American officials had raised no objections in their meetings with him in New York. “They have never given me anything official,” he told The Times. “They never said anything against it. They said they are studying it.”

In Washington, a senior State Department official acknowledged that the United States had a somewhat different view of the need for disarmament but said, “We don’t think we have a real problem there.”

A senior U.N. official, however, said that if the Americans refuse to disarm the Somali warlords and their gangs, “it goes to the heart of the matter. If U.N. peacekeepers take over from the Americans and find that the Somalis have picked up their guns again, we are back at the beginning.”

Experts said an expansive mission could raise troubling issues for the American military, whose top brass has pressed for a clearly defined, sharply limited role for U.S. troops in Somalia. Pentagon and Administration officials have spoken of U.S. Marines only re-establishing and guarding relief efforts.

But the secretary general said he based his request to President Bush on a clear interpretation of the Security Council resolution that authorized the United States and other countries to dispatch troops to Somalia. The resolution, adopted unanimously eight days ago, instructed the troops to remain until they achieved a “secure environment.”

“The resolution is very clear,” Boutros-Ghali said. “The resolution seeks to provide security, and you will not have security without disarmament.”

After raising the issue in a letter to Bush, Boutros-Ghali said he met at the United Nations with State Department and Pentagon officials to detail his position, as part of the consultations between the Americans and the world body, as called for in the Security Council resolution. He said he was satisfied with the talks and had no doubt the Americans listened to his views.

The letter to Bush, according to the secretary general, also proposed that the American military command deploy troops throughout Somalia and not just in the south as the Pentagon planned. Although the north is regarded as relatively calm and stable, he said the resolution did not differentiate between Somali sectors. “It is one entity,” he went on, “and everything is interrelated.”

The differences between Boutros-Ghali and the Administration reflected the nature of the unusual council resolution on Somalia. Unlike the resolution authorizing the Persian Gulf War, for which the United States organized a global force with U.N. blessing but without its participation, the Somali resolution provides for the world body to monitor the operation and take it over after the U.S.-led troops create a secure environment and depart.

The senior State Department official said Washington’s view of secure environment may be less secure than the secretary general’s definition. While American troops will certainly try to disarm Somali thugs, he went on, the United States looks on disarmament as “a means (to improved security) and not an end.”

Another Administration official said Boutros-Ghali wants the United States to play a more active role in the peacekeeping phase of the operation than the Administration will accept.

The official said the Administration has already agreed to leave some units behind to assist the Blue Helmets, as U.N. peacekeepers are known, in such areas as logistics.

In Washington, the question of disarming the belligerents was raised at the State Department, where spokesman Richard Boucher said it will be up to American commanders on the scene to decide how to go about disarming the Somali militias.

At a Pentagon briefing for reporters on Somalia, Lt. Gen. Martin L. Brandtner said that, despite reports of increased demands by the secretary general, the American Somali mission “has not changed and it remains the same as it was when we went in there.” He declined to speculate on how many more troops the military might have to send to Somalia to carry out Boutros-Ghali’s vision.

Military analysts said the Pentagon, based on the lessons it has learned in operations such those in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, always would seek a clear, limited role for American forces.

“The military will always define their military objectives narrowly, because the more they do, the more broadly they define their objectives, the greater the likelihood of their failing,” said Lawrence Korb of the Brookings Institution.

Col. Richard Haney, professor of military strategy at the National War College, cited the U.S. experience in Iraq, where the Administration came under fire after a successful military mission did not achieve a key political end--the ouster of President Saddam Hussein--in saying American strategists might need to reconsider their sharply limited role in Somalia.

“It’s difficult for me to see how this (operation) can have any lasting effect if there’s no effort to disarm the clans,” he said. “The temptation will be, and the concern is, that the (gunmen) will fade away into the populace and come out of the woodwork as soon as the troops leave. . . .”

“We’re in kind of uncharted territory” with Somalia-like operations, he added. “American interests are not clearly at stake here, and it’s for humanitarian reasons, so it’s a lot more difficult” to define the military mission’s limits.

Meisler reported from the United Nations and Kempster reported from Washington. Times staff writers Art Pine and Melissa Healy in Washington also contributed to this report.