Somali Warlord Offers Cease-Fire : Africa: Aidid ‘accepts’ U.S. peace overture, says he is ready for talks with other clan leaders. Clinton welcomes truce bid, made one day after American policy shift.

Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid proposed an immediate cease-fire in his urban guerrilla war with U.N. forces Saturday, and President Clinton quickly welcomed the truce offer.

Aidid, in a statement broadcast on his guerrilla faction’s radio station in Mogadishu, said he wants “a total cease-fire” that would apply to his forces, U.N. forces and the growing U.S. military contingent.

The Somali clan leader also said that he accepts Clinton’s overtures for settling the conflict--which flared after skirmishes last week left 15 Americans dead and at least one held captive--and that he is ready to resume peace talks with other Somali factions, according to news agencies that monitored the broadcast.

Clinton said he was encouraged by Aidid’s move but rejected the idea that he is negotiating a settlement directly with the warlord.

“If he’s offering (a cease-fire), that’s fine. He ought to stop the violence, because that’s a good thing. . . . I welcome it,” the President told reporters during a visit to Yale University in New Haven, Conn.

“But it’s not accurate to say that we have initiated it,” he added. “We didn’t extend an offer of a cease-fire, and there’s been no direct communications” with Aidid.

Nevertheless, Aidid’s sudden conciliatory move came only one day after Administration officials signaled informally--in conversations with diplomats and reporters--that the United States will suspend efforts to capture the warlord and allow him to participate in peace talks if he imposes a cease-fire.

The Somali general responded with several conciliatory signals of his own. He said he supports resumption of political reconciliation talks sponsored by the Organization of African Unity and offered to cooperate with an international inquiry into a June 5 ambush of Pakistani peacekeeping troops that prompted the United Nations to attack Aidid’s facilities.

Aidid even offered condolences to the families of both Somali and U.N. troops who have been killed, and ended his brief speech with the words: “Peace. Justice. Progress.”

U.S. officials said that they do not plan to negotiate any formal truce with Aidid. “We’re delighted if Aidid is willing to do this, but it would be a unilateral cease-fire,” one official said. “We’ll judge him on the basis of his actions.”

The net effect, it appeared, would be to return Mogadishu to the situation it enjoyed before the June 5 incident touched off a street-level war between Aidid’s forces and the U.N. command.

One question that remained unclear was how the cease-fire would affect the fate of Chief Warrant Officer Michael J. Durant, the U.S. helicopter pilot held captive by Aidid’s militia.

Asked about Durant, Clinton said: “We expect that he will be released. I can’t give you any other specific comment now.”

A senior Defense Department official said that the Administration is willing to seek “an exchange” of prisoners, apparently including both Durant and 24 Aidid followers held by the U.N. force. Undersecretary of Defense Frank Wisner told Cable News Network: “In the context of a political settlement, I’d like to think that there’s going to be an exchange of those who have been held or captured.”

But a White House official said it is too early to negotiate such a release now. “We aren’t, at this stage, willing to enter into a prisoner exchange,” he said.

Clinton and other Administration officials took pains to emphasize that they will not negotiate directly with Aidid, whose supporters dragged the bodies of downed U.S. helicopter crewmen through Mogadishu’s streets last week--but they also took pains to signal Aidid that an indirect way to make peace is available.

“I think that the peace process, which sort of got derailed over the last several months, is going to get back in gear,” Clinton said, adding he sees “a great likelihood of a successful political resolution to this.”

But he said it is up to African leaders, not the United States, to take the leading role in negotiating a settlement.

“We believe that over the long run, the only way the Somalis can live in peace with one another is if their neighbors work out an African solution to an African problem,” Clinton said.

Officials said U.S. envoy Robert B. Oakley, who was expected to arrive in Mogadishu today, will probably not meet with Aidid during his stay in Somalia.

Oakley spent Saturday in neighboring Ethiopia and met with President Meles Zenawi, a U.S. ally and regional leader who already has offered to lead mediation efforts.

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali also plans to go to Somalia, and Clinton praised his efforts, too--although the effect of the U.S. move toward a compromise with Aidid has been to undercut the U.N. chief, who had demanded the warlord’s arrest.

Aidid’s proposals for renewed peace talks and an inquiry into the June 5 ambush coincided with suggestions U.S. officials have been making for several days.

An OAU-sponsored “transitional council” that would have included Aidid and 14 other Somali factional leaders in an interim government was derailed by the violence in Mogadishu.

In the June 5 incident, 24 Pakistani peacekeeping troops were killed when their column of vehicles was ambushed by Somali gunmen. The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution blaming Aidid and demanding that he be brought to justice; Aidid has denied that his militia was responsible.

Oakley has suggested that Ethiopia’s Meles could set up an inquiry into the incident that might satisfy the United Nations. By accepting an inquiry, Aidid appeared to be agreeing to the U.S. proposal.

Experts on Somalia have said that Aidid, the leader of one of Mogadishu’s most powerful clans, believed he had no choice but to fight when the United Nations was attempting to arrest him.

But if he is offered a place at the negotiating table and relieved of the fear of arrest, he would probably be amenable to compromise, the experts said.

Their forecasts formed a basis for the U.S. policy moves of the past week, undertaken after an abortive raid on Aidid’s stronghold last Sunday left 15 American servicemen dead.

The United Nations reported recovering two bodies Friday. If they are identified as Americans, the U.S. death toll in the raid would rise to 17, with one soldier still unaccounted for.

Times staff writer Paul Richter, in New Haven, Conn., contributed to this report.