U.N. Vote Cuts Size, Powers of Peacekeepers in Somalia : Africa: U.S. troop withdrawal influences decision. Remaining force will not be allowed to disarm warlords.

Left little choice by the impending withdrawal of U.S. troops and the exodus of others, the Security Council voted unanimously Friday to scale down the U.N. peacekeeping operation in Somalia in both size and powers.

The authorized strength of the mission was cut down from a maximum of 29,000 to a maximum of 22,000, and, even more important, the peacekeepers were shorn of their authority to disarm the Somali warlords and factions by force.

It was this authority that led to the disastrous hunt for Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid that ended with the deaths of 18 American soldiers Oct. 3. The public furor in the United States over the deaths and the desecration of one of the dead Americans in the streets of Mogadishu persuaded President Clinton to order all American forces to leave by March 31.

U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright, who helped draft the resolution, told the other ambassadors that it “states clearly what many of us have been saying for months: The people of Somalia must bear the responsibility for national reconciliation and the reconstruction of their country.”

“If Somalis wish to take advantage of the interest in the international community to assist in Somalia’s rehabilitation,” she went on, “then they should rigorously and genuinely pursue all opportunities to resolve their differences peacefully.”

Albright also insisted that relief efforts would now depend on Somali efforts to maintain security.

“Somalis cannot expect assistance to continue where relief workers and logistic facilities are attacked and relief supplies are looted,” she said. “The United Nations forces will do their part to protect this humanitarian effort, but it is up to the Somalis to assure enough security for humanitarian assistance to continue.”

British Ambassador to the United Nations David Hannay, deriding those who looked on the operation in Somalia as a U.N. defeat, described the resolution as an attempt “to seek to consolidate the achievements.”

Instead of the sweeping language of past resolutions about enforcing security and disarmament in Somalia, the latest resolution authorizes the U.N. peacekeepers to do no more than assist Somalis “in their cooperative efforts to achieve disarmament.”

The peacekeepers are also assigned the duty of protecting relief workers and U.N. officials and of guarding ports, airports and roads that are part of the system for distributing humanitarian relief.

In the main, the Security Council resolution follows the recommendation of Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in a recent report.

The secretary general, infuriated by the American withdrawal but frustrated by the paucity of responses to his appeals for more troops from other countries, had asked for a force of 16,000. But the ambassadors on the council, hopeful that he could do better, raised that figure by 6,000.

In any case, the new force will largely be a Third World operation with limited firepower and armor, dominated by the troops of countries such as India, Pakistan and Nigeria.

In mid-January, the dwindling U.N. contingent numbered 25,500 troops, with an additional 8,000 American troops, both offshore and on land, outside the U.N. command.

European governments had been considering a withdrawal even before the October tragedy. The American decision to go melted any lingering European resolve about staying, and practically none of the Europeans will be left by March 31.

The Security Council resolution raises a fear that is haunting U.N. officials: a reversion to the banditry and factional killing that created the starvation and malnutrition that first prompted President George Bush to dispatch Marines to Somalia in December, 1992.

The resolution expressed “serious concern at reports that Somali factions are rearming and that a troop buildup is taking place in some regions of Somalia.”

But the Security Council gave the peacekeepers no authority to deal with this.

Instead, the council, using a kind of carrot-but-no-stick approach, promised that funds and supplies for reconstructions will go first to those Somali regions “where security is being re-established.”