U.N. Offers a Reward for Somali Warlord After Defiant Interviews

The United Nations offered a reward Wednesday for information leading to the capture of Mohammed Farah Aidid, a day after the fugitive warlord virtually dared peacekeepers to try to arrest him.

Posters and leaflets carrying a likeness of Aidid beneath the word “wanted” will be tacked up on walls and dropped by helicopters throughout Mogadishu today, U.N. spokesman Barrie Walkley said.

The posters and leaflets do not specify the amount of the reward, and Walkley refused to disclose it.

Thousands of the wanted leaflets were to have been dropped by helicopters Wednesday, Walkley said, but a day of drizzling rain prevented the distribution.

U.N. troops at road checkpoints in and outside of Mogadishu have been given photographs of Aidid, one of his chief allies, Col. Omar Jess, and two associates.

The reward was announced a day after Aidid haunted the United Nations in interviews with Voice of America, a U.S. government broadcasting agency, and NBC-TV.

“You know, I am here in the city of Mogadishu and I am protected by God and my people,” Aidid told the Voice of America. “Therefore, I am not worried by the search they are conducting.”

It was not known where in Mogadishu the interviews were conducted, but U.N. officials have said that they think they know where Aidid is holed up.

The warlord, an Italian-trained general who defected from the regime of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre before his fall in early 1991, is wanted in a June 5 ambush that resulted in the deaths of 24 Pakistani U.N. peacekeepers and the wounding of 58 others. The United Nations has accused him of crimes against humanity.