Battles Rage as Bush Ends Somali Trip : Africa: While President visits orphanage and praises troops’ mercy mission, fighting flares in ravaged country. The clan warfare leaves 17 Somalis dead on one side alone.

Fighting raged Friday in this seaside capital and the north-central town of Gocaiyo as President Bush completed his two-day New Year’s visit to Somalia, flying inland to tour an orphanage and thank U.S. troops for their humanitarian mission.

Bush flew to the feeding center town of Baidoa, 160 miles northwest of Mogadishu, from the Navy assault ship Tripoli, where he had spent the night. Amid tight security, he greeted U.S. troops at the airport and inspected a display of weapons confiscated from Somalis, then sped through the town in an armored personnel carrier to an orphanage housing about 800 children. Singing children and residents lined the streets to greet him.

At the orphanage, the children chanted a welcome as Bush, a garland of orange and purple bougainvillea around his neck, shook hands with some, patted others on the head and hoisted one smiling child into the air.

“It’s a very emotional thing,” he said later in thanking U.S. troops in Mogadishu, “when you see the young children in town, and you all saved their lives.”

But earlier, just a few miles from where he was speaking and where patrolling U.S. Marines directed traffic Friday, machine-gun fire had rattled and popped in a dusty suburb of the capital. Tanks had lowered their muzzles and fired down alleys in broad daylight. Artillery exchanges and street battles had raged for part of the day.

A U.S. military spokesman said Bush did not see or hear the fighting, which did not involve any of the international forces who are in Somalia to ensure the safety of food convoys and relief workers helping a nation reduced to chaos by civil war, drought and famine.

But Bush seemed to make an indirect reference to the continuing violence and to promise that Somalia would not be permitted to sink back into anarchy.

“We’re not going to leave the people naked here,” he said after returning to Mogadishu from Baidoa. “There’s going to be a follow-on force, and it’s all being worked out now.”

In a farewell speech to the troops at the airport, however, he expressed concern that U.S. forces not get too deeply involved. Acknowledging that his audience might well be eager to get home, he added, “I guess that everybody’s wondering, well, that’s great, but for how long?

“I wish I knew the answer, but I know it’s not an open-ended commitment.”

Early this morning, Bush left Mogadishu for Moscow, where he and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin are scheduled to sign a Strategic Arms Reduction Talks treaty cutting the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals by about two-thirds.

The flare-up of violence in Somalia had begun Thursday when an ally of one of the two clan leaders dominating the capital decided to launch an attempt to recapture neighborhoods lost in recent fighting. With self-declared interim President Ali Mahdi Mohamed and his chief rival, Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, having declared an end to their civil war Monday, an ally of Mahdi’s expected, incorrectly, that Aidid’s forces would stand by, impassively. Instead, Aidid unleashed his own heavy weaponry and drove the ground attacks back.

The heavy fighting continued into Friday. It left 17 Somalis dead and 25 wounded on one side, U.S. officials said, without specifying which. Casualties on the other side were unknown.

U.S. officials limited their peacemaking to mediation efforts. American military spokesman Col. Michael Hagee repeatedly refused to say clearly whether U.S. forces would try to seize or destroy the arms used in the fighting.

The violence taking place so close to the U.S. peacekeepers underscores the potential of a return to chaos and has exposed some shortcomings in the American design for restoring order. By limiting their presence to the southern sections of Somalia and specified feeding centers such as Baidoa, the Americans had left open the possibility for civil war to rage elsewhere.

For instance, heavy fighting has broken out around the north-central town of Gocaiyo. The battles there began to rage after the arrival of gunmen from Mogadishu put out of work by the U.S.-brokered truce between Mahdi and Aidid. Aidid had sent his gunmen to Gocaiyo to help his militia launch a counteroffensive against rivals there, aides to the clan leader said.

Hagee said U.S. forces would not try to stop the Gocaiyo fighting because it “was out of the geographical area of operation.”

He was harder-pressed to explain the inaction in the face of fighting in Mogadishu’s outskirts.

U.S. military officials suggested that the new violence was more of an aftershock of two years of civil war rather than a dangerous new trend. Hagee contrasted the fighting with scenes of evident normalcy that have returned to large parts of Mogadishu.

“You saw how markets are open and people are outside all day,” he said.

Nonetheless, the Americans kept options open on greater use of force. Hagee warned that anyone who uses heavy weapons runs a “great risk.”

“We view with great concern any firing of any (heavy) weapons,” he said, referring to the mortars, artillery and recoilless rifles used in the continuing battles. “We are prepared to take action if necessary.”

For the first time since U.S. troops arrived Dec. 9, relief officials complained of a reversal in the trend of pacification. To their concerns about the renewed fighting were added fears about small-scale harassment of international aid efforts. Farouk Mawlawi, a U.N. spokesman in Mogadishu, reported that seven armed men stole a UNICEF car and beat a passenger who was slow to leave the vehicle. Goods were looted from another relief car but later returned.

“The lawless are becoming bolder again,” he said. “There is no question. A feeling of unease is growing that security has deteriorated.”

The cautious U.S. approach to peacekeeping has begun to worry independent observers who otherwise have praised the effectiveness of the U.S.-led international force in opening the lines of emergency food supplies to starving Somalis. They argue that the caution might be taken as a green light by blood enemies to resume fighting, that the goodwill created by the U.S. intervention may soon dissipate. A lull in fighting only gives time for political rivals to rest, these critics say.

“There are people who only achieve leadership by way of arms. The only way to stop them is to take their weapons,” said Seifulaziz Milas, a U.N. expert on Somali politics.

There was no indication, however, that the flare-up had altered the U.S. determination to stay away from fighting and eventually turn over increasing amounts of security work to foreign forces that have joined in the campaign.

Satisfaction with the pace of relief efforts was signaled through a reduction in the planned deployment of U.S. soldiers. Hagee announced that a recommendation by mission commander Lt. Gen. Robert B. Johnston that the total number of U.S. troops expected to reach Somalia in coming weeks be reduced by 4,000 had been accepted.

In all, 24,000 Americans are expected to take part instead of 28,000, military officials said. About 18,000 are occupying parts of Somalia alongside 7,000 soldiers from 20 other countries under the U.N.-authorized buildup.

At each stop Friday, Bush, clad in camouflage desert fatigues, offered New Year’s greetings and expressed his pride in the efforts of the U.S. troops to secure relief supplies for Somalia’s famine victims.

“When I see some clips on the television from the soldiers and the airmen and the Marines and the Navy saying, well, they want to help others, why, it’s a wonderful thing, and we are very, very grateful to you,” Bush told the troops in a farewell speech at Mogadishu’s airport. Noting that his presidency had only about 19 days left, Bush said that “one of the great joys of being President has been working with the U.S. military. . . . I’ll take with me the wonderful memories of the best fighting forces the United States has ever had--best in the entire world.”

Earlier, during an unusual question-and-answer session with Marines in Baidoa, Bush said he took pride in using force judiciously as a foreign policy tool. But when asked by a young Marine whether the Defense Department would undertake similar humanitarian missions in the future, Bush shook his head to indicate “no.”

“I would have to say to you it would be a special case because of the enormity of it,” he said of Somalia. But the response in this case does not mean the United States will send troops every time there is somebody hurting, he said.

“We simply can’t do that. We don’t have the money.”

MAHONY IN SOMALIA: Cardinal Roger Mahony sees signs of hope in Somalia. A20