U.S. Pullout Expected to Begin Soon : Somalia: With relief effort ahead of schedule, Scowcroft says withdrawal is likely to start by Inauguration Day.

The Bush Administration now expects the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Somalia to be under way by Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft said Sunday.

“I believe it will not be too long before U.S. contingents can begin to withdraw, first as other foreign forces come in and as the operation turns from a peacemaking, if you will, into more of a peacekeeping (mission),” Scowcroft said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

As for the dispute between the United States and U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali about disarming Somali militias, he said that President Bush had clearly laid out U.S. objectives in a letter to Boutros-Ghali before U.S. troops were dispatched and that they did not include disarming.

“The problem with disarming as an objective in itself, rather than concomitant with pacifying the country, is that it becomes an open-ended commitment, and we feel that that can be done by peacekeeping forces after the main job of pacification has taken place,” Scowcroft said.

Although the special U.S. envoy to Mogadishu, Robert B. Oakley, has taken a lead in mediating with Somali warlords, Scowcroft said the responsibility for determining Somalia’s future also lies with the United Nations.

“The problem of putting Somalia back together--of disarming these people, of building a Somali armed force, a police force and a government--is something that the U.N. ought to be getting about, and it will take a long time,” he added.

Marine Lt. Gen. Robert B. Johnston, field commander of Operation Restore Hope, said Sunday that the humanitarian mission is ahead of schedule. He said U.S. forces have completed the first phase, establishing the major humanitarian-relief sectors, and have begun a new phase of stabilization.

“We still have to go through a stabilization phase to get all the technicals (thugs in gun-mounted pickups) off the street, to go into north Mogadishu and clean that up,” he said on CNN’s “Newsmaker Sunday.” “Things are going extremely well from my vantage point.”

Johnston added that U.S. troops have started to “aggressively patrol” Mogadishu and have already collected many armed vehicles and small arms.

Johnston said he is confident the technicals “will very quickly disappear,” although he conceded that Somalia’s borders with Ethiopia and Kenya are porous and that trapping all the gunmen will be impossible.