U.N. Calls for Crackdown After Killings in Somalia

A shaken U.N. Security Council on Sunday night unanimously called for the arrest, trial and punishment of those behind the killings of 22 U.N. peacekeepers in Somalia over the weekend, one of the most devastating such attacks in the world body’s history.

The council also called on member countries to send more troops and heavy equipment to Somalia so that U.N. personnel there could disarm warlords who had brought widespread famine to the country before U.S. troops last year introduced a semblance of order.

This month’s council president, Spanish Ambassador Juan Antonio Yanez Baruevo, said the 15-member council reaffirmed the right of U.N. peacekeepers to use force against Somali forces, “not only to defend themselves but to prevent such action from happening again.”

While the council resolution did not specifically blame Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, the most powerful warlord in Somalia, ambassadors suggested strongly outside the council chamber that he was the target of their outrage.

“Clearly there’s a great deal of circumstantial evidence linking him to this,” said Pakistani U.N. Ambassador Jamsheed Marker.

A U.N. report issued to the council on the weekend bloodshed said Aidid and his followers were behind the attacks, which left 22 Pakistanis and at least 20 Somalis dead, and more than 100 people wounded, including 50 Pakistanis and three American military personnel. More than 10 Pakistanis are missing--held hostage, according to Marker.

Also Sunday, outside the capital Mogadishu, U.S. military helicopters hit three arms dumps belonging to Aidid, as U.N. and international agencies evacuated more than 200 of their relief workers from Somalia for fear of more street battles, according to agency reports.

Large quantities of artillery and armored vehicles belonging to Aidid’s followers were destroyed in the raids by U.S. Huey Cobra helicopters on the sites north of Mogadishu, the Italian news agency ANSA reported from the Somali capital. There was no word on casualties.

Mogadishu was described as quiet but extremely tense.

There are 4,750 Pakistani servicemen among the 16,700 U.N. troops stationed in Somalia. The United States still has about 4,000 personnel.

The United Nations said that the attack on the peacekeepers followed radio broadcasts in which Aidid accused U.N. troops of shooting women and children and seizing Radio Mogadishu.

In reality, the report said, the attacks on personnel of the U.N. Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) “appear to be a calculated, premeditated series of major cease-fire violations meant to challenge and intimidate. . . .”

Instead of the measured tones of debate and comment that usually punctuate council action, diplomats expressed great outrage and emotion as they acted. Even normally understated Chinese Ambassador Zhaoxing Li said his country was “shocked” at the attacks and expressed “a demand in the strongest terms” that the United Nations punish those responsible for them.

Those responsible should “pay a heavy price,” said U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright. “We are totally outraged by what happened in Mogadishu.”

Pakistan’s Marker, who had requested the council meeting, tried to link the incident to Serbian defiance of repeated U.N. pleas for an end to attacks on Muslim civilians in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but he said Pakistan would not back away from its pledge last week to send more than 3,000 troops to staff U.N. peacekeeping forces there.

Marker said the end of the Cold War has led to “the emergence of petty warlords and dictators.” Events in Bosnia and Somalia are “testimony to the murderous length to which these international thugs are prepared to go in order to maintain their regimes of greed, terror and oppression.”

U.N. peacekeeping personnel have generally been immune to widespread attacks. The weekend incident appears to be the worst single toll since the killings of 44 Ghanaian peacekeepers in 1961 in the Congo. About 237 U.N. peacekeepers died during the Congo operation.

U.N. peacekeeping forces in Somalia are now below the authorized level of 28,000. The council has called on countries to send more troops to bring the force up to its maximum strength. It asked, “on an emergency basis,” to send armored personnel carriers, tanks and attack helicopters to U.N. forces in Somalia.

The council resolution called on U.N. forces in Somalia to disarm all Somalis and to begin “neutralizing radio broadcasting systems that contribute to the violence and attacks directed against” U.N. troops.

In Mogadishu, Adm. Jonathan Howe, the retired U.S. naval officer who is now the U.S. special envoy to Somalia, said Sunday that the clashes were “preconceived and planned” by Aidid’s followers. Aidid had earlier charged that U.N. troops had provoked the fighting and called on U.S. forces to withdraw from part of the capital.

U.N. troops were scheduled Saturday to inspect five weapons storage sites, including one at the radio station under Aidid’s control, which sparked rumors that U.N. forces were going to seize it--despite advance notification of the U.N. inspection Friday. Crowds had gathered at four of the five locations before U.N. forces even arrived, the report added.

As U.N. troops and facilities came under fire, Pakistani units were trapped in a “large, carefully prepared three-sided ambush.” American, Italian and Turkish troops were brought into the skirmishes in attempts to rescue the Pakistanis.

“At this junction it would appear that Aidid is seeking a confrontation with UNOSOM in order to take control of the political reconciliation and judicial processes,” the report said.

Behind the Security Council debate lies a broader issue about the extent of force permissible by U.N. troops--and not only in Somalia. In past U.N. military operations around the world, lightly armed U.N. forces were actually peace monitors rather than peacekeepers since they were always outnumbered and outgunned by local armies.

But in new rules of engagement in Somalia, established first during U.S.-led Operation Restore Hope and assumed last month by the United Nations, foreign forces are allowed to use firepower in a broader range of circumstances, and units are armed with more sophisticated equipment like tanks.

Times staff writer Wright reported from Washington and special correspondent Friedman reported from the United Nations.