400 More GIs Part of New Effort to Neutralize Aidid : Somalia: If the Rangers cannot capture the fugitive warlord, they will move to isolate him physically, military experts say.

The Clinton Administration’s decision to send 400 U.S. Army Rangers to Somalia represents a major new effort to protect existing U.S. troops from ambush and to neutralize fugitive warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Publicly, the Administration continued to deny that the deployment is aimed primarily at capturing or killing Aidid, who has been the object of a U.S.-U.N. manhunt since mid-June. His militiamen were blamed for the June 5 ambush that left 24 Pakistani peacekeeping soldiers dead.

But well-placed Administration policy-makers conceded privately that there is no question the Rangers are being dispatched mainly to help break Aidid’s grip on the Somali capital--by capturing him, if possible, or by blunting his influence in other ways.

“We are trying not to personalize this--this is not an effort to go after one man,” Kathleen deLaski, the Pentagon’s spokeswoman, insisted to reporters Tuesday. “It’s an effort to improve the overall (security) situation in Mogadishu.”

If the Rangers cannot quickly catch Aidid, they will move to isolate him physically and intensify pressure on his guerrillas, using counterterrorism tactics to disrupt his links with his followers and to disarm and break down his forces, military experts said.

The highly trained U.S. forces also are expected to take steps to reduce the number of casualties being suffered by U.S. troops in Somalia. Attacks against Americans there have increased markedly in recent weeks, largely because of an intensified campaign by Aidid’s forces.

The Rangers are elite commando units skilled at everything from urban combat--useful in possible efforts to flush out the general and his top commanders during house-to-house searches--to stealthily blowing up suspected headquarters buildings.

Military analysts say the Rangers offer a combination of special training and high-technology equipment.

U.S. officials said the 400 soldiers, members of the 75th Ranger Regiment at Ft. Benning, Ga., will leave the United States by plane within a few days and will be kept in reserve for “special duties.”

“Defusing Aidid doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to kill him or take him prisoner,” said Robert H. Gaskin, a former Pentagon strategist now with Business Executives for National Security, a defense-oriented research group.

Gaskin said the United States effectively persuaded Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi to suspend his terrorist activities for several years with a bombing raid in 1986 that nearly claimed his life.

The Administration faces a difficult political dilemma in its quest to capture Aidid. If it emphasizes its goal publicly, it risks looking foolish if the general continues to elude U.S. forces.

Policy-makers recall Washington’s embarrassment after the Panama invasion of December, 1989, when Panama’s strongman, Gen. Manuel A. Noriega, initially escaped U.S. and local forces by moving from house to house, much as Aidid has been doing.

“We just can’t afford another Noriega,” one strategist said.

Some U.S. planners also fear that Aidid’s success in eluding U.N. forces may have convinced him that the entire U.N. effort is about to collapse--making him and his followers more willing to continue their opposition longer than they would otherwise.

By strengthening its forces, the United States wants to show Aidid and his fighters that it is willing to stay the course.

Neutralizing Aidid has important long-term implications for Washington. Until the general is no longer a threat, the Administration cannot begin to bring American troops home from Somalia.