U.N. Chief Sees Clinton Need to Scapegoat Him

Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali is heading to Mogadishu this week convinced that he has helped President Clinton by serving as the scapegoat of the Somalia debacle, but sure that the President must embrace the United Nations again if he does not want to become “the sheriff of the world.”

Talking Monday with a small group of reporters representing media throughout the world, the secretary general touched a theme that has infuriated his staff for most of the past week: the incessant rhetoric from Washington that has blamed him and the United Nations for the questionable military operations that culminated in a disastrous raid that left 15 American troops dead.

“I don’t want to provoke the member states,” he said in reply to a question about his role as scapegoat. “I need the member states. . . . I must help the member states so that they will be able to help me. If the member states need the United Nations to overcome certain internal problems, the United Nations must accept.”

But, he added quietly, “it can be dangerous for the United Nations.”

U.N. officials were irritated when Clinton, in his televised speech last week announcing a doubling of the American forces, pointedly declared that these troops “will be under American command,” as if that were a change in status. This ignored the fact that the American combat troops caught in the bloody battles of Mogadishu were already under American, not U.N., command. A drumbeat of anti-U.N. talk proceeded from Washington, culminating in a New York meeting in which Gen. Joseph P. Hoar of the U.S. Central Command and U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright reportedly dressed down Boutros-Ghali for the United Nations’ alleged failure in Somalia.

The secretary general did not expand his public remarks Monday, but a highly placed U.N. official said that Boutros-Ghali was concerned about the future of Somalia after the American withdrawal next March 31 and the future of all U.N. peace enforcement operations worldwide after the American pullout.

There are doubts, for example, that the secretary general and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization can now put together a force of 50,000 troops to enforce any peace agreement in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

But Boutros-Ghali, the official went on, feels that he “cannot afford a confrontation not only with the United States but with all the member states.”

Yet the secretary general did not express the pessimism of many U.N. officials who feel that Clinton, by heaping blame upon the secretary general, has hurt the United Nations badly.

Asked if the Clinton Administration’s sudden coolness toward the United Nations after its early closeness represented a lost opportunity, Boutros-Ghali replied, “We will always be able to convince the member states that it is in their interest to assist the United Nations. . . . If the member states don’t want to play by themselves the role of policeman of the world, the sheriff of the world, they must assist the United Nations.”

Boutros-Ghali, a former Egyptian deputy prime minister who speaks English with a slight accent and some French grammatical constructions, made it clear that it was up to Clinton to turn around an American public that is obviously now against taking part in U.N. military operations.

“The United States public opinion is not ready . . . , “ he said. “The public opinion is more ready to solve their internal problems.

“So the leadership must help the public opinion,” he went on, “must explain that today we are on the same boat, that . . . what is going on wrong in this region can have an impact on the world society.”

U.N. officials are clearly concerned that an American withdrawal from Somalia would cripple all peace enforcement issues in the future. The Somalia mission, in fact, is regarded as a new model for the future, far different from the traditional passive peacekeeping in which U.N. troops simply man cease-fire lines.

“We don’t want to underestimate neither our difficulties nor our errors,” the secretary general said in a defense of the Somalia operation. “We have certainly committed setbacks, and we will have setbacks in the future. We are beginning a new operation. We have never played this role. So don’t ask us to be perfect.”

Boutros-Ghali laughed at the contention by some of his critics in Washington that he is power hungry. “The weakest partner among all the actors in international relations is the United Nations,” he said.

The United Nations, he insisted, is wholly dependent on the wishes of its members. “Tomorrow they can destroy the United Nations in one second if they want,” he said.

The highly placed U.N. official tried to dispel the notion that the Somalia operation was a United Nations show. “It is not the U.N. who runs the operations. It is the member states,” he said. “ . . . Who is the man who is doing the operation in Somalia? It is an American administration. . . . That we are managing everything is not true. We are doing this through the member states.”

In the case of the U.S. Quick Reaction Force and the Rangers, the specialized troops involved in the bloody confrontation with the militia loyal to warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid, the official said “they depended entirely on Washington.” Asked if the United Nations in New York had been informed of the intended American action a week ago, the official replied, “We are not micro-managing those kinds of operations.”

He said the United Nations depends on the decisions of the commanders on the spot and is informed of the action later.

But he added that as long as the operation was under the U.N. flag, the United Nations would accept responsibility.

The official, maintaining that every step taken by the secretary general in Somalia had been ordered by the Security Council, said that the United Nations had little choice but to accept the frustrating criticism heaped upon it by Washington.

The official also denied that the secretary general was disturbed by the American appointment of former Ambassador Robert B. Oakley as a special U.S. envoy attempting to work out a political solution in Somalia. But the official downplayed Oakley’s role.

The official also denied that Boutros-Ghali and the United Nations had any personal animosity toward Aidid. “If tomorrow Aidid will be able to be appointed king of Somalia and you have peace, I have no objection. Who cares?”