U.S. Unveils $190-Million Somali Aid Plan : Africa: The assistance shifts the focus of America’s role from armed intervention to reconstruction.

In an attempt to shift the focus of America’s role in Somalia from armed intervention to national reconstruction, senior U.S. officials in Mogadishu on Saturday unveiled a $190-million humanitarian assistance plan that will continue to supply food, development aid and U.S. civilian experts to this war-ravaged nation this year.

Declaring the aid package “a tremendous amount of money for one, relatively small country,” U.S. Special Envoy Robert T. Gosende told reporters that the plan, which includes more than $100 million to continue paying for the emergency food and medical pipeline set up to fight Somalia’s war-fueled famine, is almost double the aid received by any other comparable African country.

Gosende’s news conference was timed to coincide with the pullout of the last of the U.S. combat troops that occupied 40% of the country last December in a show of force meant to paralyze the armed Somali militias and bandits who had looted millions of dollars worth of international relief, precipitated the starvation of more than 250,000 of their countrymen and transformed their nation into a wasteland.

The United Nations in New York confirmed that the U.S. military’s lead role in the intervention will formally end Tuesday, with a brief, final ceremony turning over to U.N. commanders control of a scaled-down multinational peacekeeping force that will remain here. But the U.S. envoy took pains to stress America’s continuing commitment to a nation that shows increasing signs of feeling insecure under a U.N.-led force.

U.N. military commanders Saturday also sought to calm a country where bandits and warlords remain armed, though clearly weakened after the U.S.-led Operation Restore Hope confiscated and destroyed 2 million rounds of ammunition, more than 8,300 machine guns, rifles and pistols and nearly 300 artillery pieces and mortars.

On a day of continuing sporadic violence in Somalia, Lt. Gen. Cevik Bir, the Turkish U.N. commander who will take over from Marine Lt. Gen. Robert B. Johnston on Tuesday, taped a reassuring radio address that will be aired today on Radio Hope, a national Somali-language radio station set up by the Marines and turned over to the United Nations last week.

In it, Bir tells the Somalis that the mission and capability of his force is no different from that of the U.S.-led coalition; only a few faces will change, according to the operation’s new press spokesman, U.S. Army Maj. David Stockwell.

Stockwell also reported that a Saudi Arabian relief worker was shot and killed in an ambush late Friday, bringing to five the number of international aid workers killed since the Marines landed in Mogadishu on Dec. 9.

But it was the civilian voice of the U.S. envoy that carried the message of the day.

“Somalia will remain a country that the United States is interested in,” Gosende said after giving the details of $13.8 million in grants to 27 different private, international relief agencies, many of them U.S.-based.

Gosende said the United States plans to continue its huge food shipments to Somalia through the end of this year, with 237,000 metric tons allocated for the country largely because many refugees did not manage to get back to their farms in time for the rainy season that will begin any day now.

But the envoy, a veteran diplomat, said that Washington is well aware that the infusion of so much free food ultimately could be counterproductive, destroying the profits and incentives of thousands of farmers who already have planted their crops.

And the envoy conceded that U.S. aid to Somalia is likely to drop sharply in 1994.