Somali Leader Rips U.N., Stalls Talks : Peace: But even as Aidid belittles world body, Boutros-Ghali agrees to extend meeting for a day.

Somalia’s best-known warlord, Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, scorned and belittled the United Nations on Tuesday and slowed efforts by Somali political leaders meeting here to reach agreement on the first steps toward peace.

But the United Nations, sponsor of the unprecedented meetings, agreed to extend them for another day, and Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali maintained that the continued negotiation itself is far more important than the failure to agree.

“What is important,” he told a news conference, “is that the peace process has been created and the Somali leaders are talking to each other.”

In a statement distributed among all the Somali delegates, Aidid said his faction “no longer has any confidence in the leadership of the Secretariat of the U.N. . . . The U.N. bureaucrats, from the secretary general downward, have failed time and time again to demonstrate an understanding of the intricate political problems in Somalia.”

Deriding U.N. officials as “too meddling, too divisive and too secretive,” Aidid, who has long accused Boutros-Ghali of bias against him, called on the United States to reconsider its association with the United Nations in the Somali humanitarian operation.

An American diplomat, after reading the statement, said that Aidid is “trying to drive a wedge between the U.N. and the U.S., and that’s not going to happen.”

Boutros-Ghali, although he has had differences with the Bush Administration over its refusal to accept disarmament of Somali gunmen as a formal goal of the U.S.-led unified command in Somalia, dismissed Aidid’s attempt to push them apart. “The United States is part of the United Nations,” he said, “and cooperation between the unified command and the U.N. is perfect.”

But Boutros-Ghali refused to discuss Aidid’s rancorous attacks on the United Nations and the secretary general. “They are not important,” Boutros-Ghali said. “If they were important, I would answer them.”

Pressed on whether cooperation between the United Nations and Aidid is now possible, the secretary general replied, “Our role is to cooperate with everybody, and I can assure (that) everybody will cooperate with us.”

The United Nations, which called the sessions an “informal preparatory meeting,” had asked the delegates from 14 Somali political factions to come up with a date, site and agenda for a national reconciliation conference and to appoint the committee that would serve as a liaison between the Somali leaders and the United Nations.

The Somalis, meeting for many hours since Monday at a hotel, agreed on the principle of a committee headed by three leaders: Aidid; his archenemy in Mogadishu, Ali Mahdi Mohamed, and Omar Jess, the warlord of Kismayu.

But they could not agree on the other members of the committee.

Also, while most factions proposed that a conference be held in Mogadishu in 60 days, Aidid, backed by three other leaders, balked. Instead, Aidid insisted that a national conference be postponed until the leaders establish local authorities in their regions and municipalities. These local authorities would then send representatives to a national conference.

Aidid’s motivation was unclear, spawning a host of theories from foreign diplomats and U.N. officials. Aidid, according to one view, wants to have time to consolidate his position in his own territory during an era of preparation for peace.

Another view was that Aidid wants to embarrass Boutros-Ghali by scuttling his peace meetings. Aidid believes that Boutros-Ghali, when he ran foreign policy for Egypt, favored Mahdi over Aidid.

Aidid, according to still another view, figures that his best chance to maintain power in Somalia is to attract the American government, with its traditional penchant for backing strongmen.

Finally, some analysts guessed that Aidid--and this theory did not preclude the others--simply enjoys basking in the spotlight of defiance. “So far,” one European diplomat noted, “Aidid has managed to maneuver himself into being linchpin of the meetings.”

Boutros-Ghali, who plans to leave Addis Ababa today before the meetings end, warned the Somalis against deluding themselves that the United States or any other foreign power needs to ally itself with any of the warlords in order to gain something out of Somalia.

“The Cold War is finished,” he told the news conference. “Nobody wants control over Somalia. I can assure you that humanitarian relief was the only aim of the intervention. . . . Some Somalis believe Somalia has strategic importance. That’s not true. . . .

“No one is interested in Somalia,” he went on, “not for strategic reasons, not for oil, not for gold. . . . There can be a real drame (using the French word for tragedy) some day: The world could forget Somalia in a few minutes.”

His departure from Addis Ababa would end a troublesome week for the secretary general. He was jeered in Sarajevo by Bosnians who charged that the United Nations is not doing enough to hold back Serbian aggression. He was prevented from reaching U.N. headquarters in Mogadishu by a mob of Aidid supporters who stoned the U.N. compound and demanded that Boutros-Ghali leave the country.

And, while he was opening the talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopian police killed several university students (the number is still unclear) who were protesting his trip to the separatist province of Eritrea today en route to Cairo.

Boutros-Ghali told the news conference that he does not look on these events as a catalogue of negative imagery. “The reactions against the United Nations all over the world show that the U.N. is active these days and is playing a role,” he said. “This is something positive.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, Robert B. Oakley, the U.S. special envoy to Somalia, promised that the transition from the U.S. military to a U.N. peacekeeping force will occur so gradually that it will not interrupt what he said is steady progress toward restoration of law and order.

Although no timetable has been established for the turnover, Oakley said, “The United States is not in this just to say one day that we are going home and see it all collapse.”

He said that components of the Army Corps of Engineers probably will remain in Somalia to help rebuild the national infrastructure after combat forces are withdrawn.

Oakley said the U.S.-led coalition has no intention of trying to disarm individual Somalis, but he said the forces will increase efforts to confiscate mortars, grenade launchers, machine guns and other heavy weapons after more pressing tasks have been completed.

Once the warlords have been deprived of heavy arms, “they start to shrink from within,” Oakley said.

“More food is going out to the people all the time,” he said. “There still will be rip-offs but the delivery system is improving. Compared to what it was before, it is a huge, huge improvement. But there are still a lot of hungry people out there.”

In Somalia, the random violence continued.

A U.S. Marine sniper shot a Somali gunman Tuesday after his patrol came under fire during a skirmish between Somali gangs, said Marine Col. Fred Peck, spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition in Somalia. The Marine believed he killed the gunman, but no body was recovered. None of the Americans were hurt, the Associated Press said.

A Somali driver for the AP was slain by a gunman Tuesday in Mogadishu’s main food market. Ali Ibrahim Mursal, escorting several AP staffers through the market, scuffled with a man who tried to rob one of the staffers. Another man shot Mursal and fled.

Meanwhile, U.N. spokeswoman Katarina Toll said a Somali believed working for a relief agency was killed Monday by an antitank rocket on the edge of Mogadishu.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.