Commander Defends Pace of Operation

Facing growing criticism for the cautious pace with which U.S. troops are moving out of the capital of Mogadishu, Lt. Gen. Robert B. Johnston, the American military commander in Somalia, pledged Sunday that his forces will get to the terrorized city of Baidoa “as soon as we can.”

“I can’t just run 50 Marines down the road and expect that all will be well in Baidoa. . . ,” Johnston said Sunday. “It requires the right kind of troops, the right kind of support and logistics, and I will not go to Baidoa until I can, No. 1, protect the forces that go in there and be able to impose the right kind of security environment on Baidoa when we get there.”

The dispute over Baidoa underscores the tensions between U.S. military leaders, who are trying to accomplish their humanitarian mission with as few American casualties as possible, and relief organizations, which expected their work in the Somali countryside to change dramatically as soon as the American troops arrived.

Johnston, in a series of television interviews Sunday, was repeatedly forced to respond to the complaints of relief workers who say their workers in outlying areas are being harassed by gunmen while the American forces consolidate their positions in the capital.

Rick Grant, a spokesman for CARE International, said over the weekend that relief workers in Baidoa--an inland city of about 100,000 that lies more than 100 miles northwest of the port of Mogadishu--are required to stay in a house guarded by more than a dozen men with AK-47s. “It is criminal negligence the Marines aren’t there,” Grant said.

But both Johnston and Robert Oakley, the U.S. special envoy to Somalia, said that if relief workers feel unsafe in Baidoa or other outlying towns, they should depart.

“Keep in mind that those relief workers have always operated under the conditions that if they feel excessively threatened, they should simply leave their relief posts,” Johnston said in an interview with ABC television.

Andrew Natsios, President Bush’s special adviser for Somalia humanitarian relief, said Sunday that the number of deaths from starvation and disease in Baidoa has decreased from 325 a day in late September to just under 100 a day now.

“But the reason it’s gone down in Baidoa is that, we estimate, 75% of the children under the age of five in Baidoa have died of starvation already,” Natsios told CNN. “So the vulnerable people, the children, have already died.”

Johnston, the U.S. commander, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that getting American forces to Baidoa is “clearly the pressing question. I’m acutely aware of all the pressure to get there quickly.”

He estimated that there are now slightly more than 11,000 American troops in Somalia and said that he expects “the flow will continue, unless something dramatically changes, up to about the 28,000 level.”

American military and civilian officials all rejected once again Sunday suggestions by U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali that U.S. forces should seek to pacify Somalia, clearing mines and removing weapons from rival gangs, before turning the country over to U.N. peacekeeping forces.

“My goal is not, obviously, to disarm Somalia,” Johnston said. “I have a rather precisely described mission, and that is to establish the right security environment to allow for the free movement of relief supplies to the Somali people. So my mission is not to disarm the Somalis.”

However, Natsios disclosed that the United Nations is talking to the Bush Administration about setting up “a local Somali indigenous police force under U.N. command.”

“We think with a combination of the U.N. forces and these local police, that we can bring order back and we (American forces) can leave,” Natsios said. “I don’t think there’s anything that indicates to me that we have to stay there a long time, in terms of our large-scale presence.”