World View : Keeping the Peace: U.N. Gets Mixed Reaction to Goal : Clinton agrees with the idea but intends to strictly limit U.S. involvement in missions.

By STANLEY MEISLER

May 3, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

UNITED NATIONS —

In their first weeks on the job, Clinton Administration officials, flush with the excitement of fresh ideas, prepared a paper for their boss’ signature on the role of U.S. troops in peacekeeping missions of the United Nations.

Peacekeeping had become the fashionable defense concept of the New World Order, and no one anticipated much of a delay before President Clinton would sign that paper--Presidential Review Directive 13. But the mood over peacekeeping soon soured in Washington, and the official paper languished and metamorphosed for more than a year. Now, the White House says Clinton is ready to sign the latest version, probably Thursday, 15 months after the first draft of PRD 13.

The signature--even after so long a delay--signals a significant move forward. U.S. participation in U.N. peacekeeping seemed doomed last October when 18 U.S. Rangers died as the result of a raid in Somalia during the frenzied manhunt for warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid. The deaths shocked Clinton into ordering the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Somalia within five months and made him reluctant to commit any more troops to future peacekeeping ventures.

Yet, even while the President put U.S. peacekeeping in official paralysis, a host of universities and think tanks churned out innumerable reports and seminars on peacekeeping as a key element of modern defense policy. The roster of sponsors includes the U.S. Naval Academy, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the Henry L. Stimson Center, Columbia University, the National Defense University, the United Nations Assn. of the U.S.A. and Amnesty International.

On top of all this, said one U.S. military analyst, “this subject commands more time on behalf of the Joint Chiefs of Staff than any other subject.”

Analysts persist in pushing international peacekeeping because there seems no alternative for maintaining order. As U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said it in a recent news conference: “Public opinion in the United States is not eager for that country to play the role of world policeman. The United Nations is there to do that job, and there is a consensus that despite all the difficulties, despite all the contradictions, the only forum existing today that can play this role is the United Nations.”

As he prepared to sign PRD 13, Clinton evidently agreed--though with a good number of conditions. U.N. peacekeeping may still be the fashionable defense policy of the day, but a lot of problems have to be cleared up, including the exact nature of U.S. participation, the quick assembly of forces and the untangling of command in small U.N. armies made up of many nationalities. Peacekeeping is undergoing a hard look these days.

No longer locked into impotence by U.S.-Soviet enmity and vetoes, the Security Council has dealt with a rash of crises by dispatching peacekeeping missions throughout the world. In the first 40 years, the Security Council authorized 13 peacekeeping operations. In the last nine years, it has launched 20. As of March, the United Nations ran 17 peacekeeping missions with 72,000 troops and police at an annual cost of $3.2 billion.

The more recent missions have been far more complex than the old missions, which amounted to little more than patrolling of cease-fire lines.

“Peacekeeping done by a British cop with just a whistle and no stick is no longer feasible,” said Gen. Philippe Morillon of France after his return from command of the U.N. operation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Several of the newer missions--such as those in Bosnia and Somalia--involve enforcement of order and the creation of national institutions, such as a police force and a judiciary.

In the wake of the Somalia withdrawal, the U.S. contribution of peacekeepers is meager. The United States now has 714 troops in three missions: the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, western Sahara and Israeli cease-fire lines. Thirty other countries--led by France with 6,603 troops deployed--have more peacekeepers on U.N. duty. Even tiny Jordan has dispatched almost five times as many. The U.S. hesitation has created resentment in some quarters.

“We will never have clean wars,” Morillon said, evidently exasperated by the Clinton Administration’s peacekeeping policy. “You have to be ready to fight, you have to be ready to die. Clean wars do not exist.”

But the United States is not the only country wary of peacekeeping now that it has taken ugly turns. After 10 Belgian paratroopers were killed in Rwanda in a vain attempt to save the life of the prime minister from marauding Hutus in early April, Belgium announced that it was withdrawing its troops from the U.N. peacekeeping mission there.

Nevertheless, though all worry about public opinion, democratic governments such as France, Britain and Canada are far more willing to let their troops don the United Nations’ blue helmets and berets than the United States. U.S. officials and members of Congress often rationalize the U.S. reluctance by saying that U.S. soldiers are more vulnerable than others because gunmen relish the prestige of killing a representative of the world’s only superpower.

While this may be true, the U.S. reluctance still handicaps the United Nations sorely, because many governments tend to follow Washington’s lead. When Clinton decided to withdraw the Americans from Somalia, Kofi Annan of Ghana, the undersecretary general for peacekeeping, said it was difficult to persuade other world leaders to send troops to an area that the U.S. President believes is too dangerous for his own troops. The U.N. mission in Somalia is now dominated by India, Pakistan and other Third World countries.

Although the contents of PRD 13 have not been made public, Assistant Secretary of Defense Edward L. Warner III revealed the essential details in testimony a few weeks ago before a Senate Armed Services subcommittee.

Warner said that, under the new policy, the United States would take part in a U.N. peacekeeping mission only when:

* The mission advances U.S. interests.

* The level of risk is acceptable.

* The operation would fail without U.S. participation.

* The probable length and exit date for the mission are known.

In addition, U.S. forces would always be under U.S. command, meaning the President and U.S. officers would always have the final authority to issue orders covering every aspect of U.S. military operations.

But, in some cases, the Clinton Administration might put the U.S. troops under U.N. control, meaning a U.N. commander could assign a task for a U.S. unit to do under its American commander.

Warner also said that the United States, which is now assessed 31% of U.N. peacekeeping costs, would try to reduce that assessment to 25%.

While trying to produce a coherent policy on peacekeeping, the Clinton Administration has been skittish for months about seeming gung-ho. Warner’s testimony reflected this.

“Peace operations are not the centerpiece of U.S. foreign and defense policy,” he said. “Our peacekeeping policy review has not been an effort to expand U.N. peacekeeping or U.S. involvement in U.N. operations. Rather, it is an effort to improve the U.N. and its ability to undertake peace operations . . . and to make better use of American contributions.”

Yet he also testified that the Pentagon had started training military units for “the unique challenges associated with peace operations” and was developing new equipment, such as “belly plates” for armored personnel carriers, and non-lethal crowd control weapons for peacekeeping.

As a practical matter, the conditions laid down in PRD 13, if followed strictly, would likely keep U.S. troops out of most peacekeeping operations.

“If you need to know the exit date before you go into an operation,” a former senior official of the State Department said, “you will never go in.”

U.N. officials were angered last September when Clinton, addressing the General Assembly, said: “If the American people are to say yes to peacekeeping, the United Nations must know when to say no.”

His phrasing skirted the fact that the United States, with its veto in the Security Council, could have stopped any peacekeeping operation it did not like.

Since then, U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright has tried to scale down and even prevent some peacekeeping missions--even when they are supported by traditional U.S. allies Britain and France. Under U.S. pressure, for example, the Security Council authorized 3,300 extra peacekeepers for the “safe areas” of Bosnia in March rather than the 10,000 requested by Secretary General Boutros-Ghali. The siege of Gorazde soon underscored the desperate need for more peacekeepers, and the United States gave in a month later and voted with the rest of the council to approve the other troops.

The Clinton Administration’s hesitation has also weakened the United Nations’ campaign to speed up the time it takes to start a mission. For a year, Col. Gerard Gambiez of France, on special assignment for the United Nations, has led a task force trying to persuade governments to set aside trained units that the secretary general could call up when he needed to assemble a peacekeeping force.

This troubled U.S. officials at first.

“My American friends think I am talking about a standing army, which is not the case,” Gambiez said recently. What his task force wanted, he said, was for governments to designate trained troops that could be called up when the Security Council authorized a mission. Despite the commitments, governments could still refuse to dispatch the troops if the proposed mission troubled them. Moreover, knowing the Clinton Administration’s reluctance to send U.S. soldiers into peacekeeping missions, Gambiez asked the United States to commit resources such as transport and communications rather than soldiers.

“We don’t need paratroopers,” Gambiez said. “We need things that are much more precious and that are too expensive for other countries to provide. . . . We can play without the United States, but it would be a pity.”

At an April 14 meeting with U.N. diplomats, Gambiez announced that 18 countries had signed agreements with the United Nations to designate 28,000 troops as standby forces for peacekeeping. In addition, he said that 13 other governments were engaged in serious negotiations that could result in signed agreements for 42,000 more troops--making a total standby force of 70,000, about the same number that are now in the field. The colonel did not identify all the governments that had signed agreements but later told reporters that France was one.

The session produced a sign of cooperation from the Clinton Administration. Albright’s deputy, Ambassador Karl F. Inderfurth, told the meeting that the U.S. government welcomed the work of the task force and would soon provide the United Nations with a detailed “listing of the (U.S.) military capabilities it feels most appropriate for peacekeeping purposes.”

But Inderfurth said the Clinton Administration would not sign any agreement and that the list “in no way implies a commitment to provide these capabilities.”

Nevertheless, Gambiez hailed the promise of a list as a breakthrough.

“This is exactly what I want,” he told reporters. “This is what I have been waiting for. I want to know what they will make available to us. I do not need a piece of paper. They cannot sign for internal political reasons.”

A constant refrain comes from Clinton Administration officials, members of Congress and think tank analysts when they discuss peacekeeping: that there often is confusion over who is really in charge. This issue is heightened by the feeling among many outsiders and, in fact, insiders as well, that U.N. bureaucrats are often inept.

The command in Bosnia has long been entangled in crossed signals and recriminations--not surprising in a mission with confused goals.

The United Nations has acted both as an impartial referee distributing food to all and as a protector of besieged towns from Serbian aggression. Military decisions have been made by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, U.N. peacekeeping commanders and U.N. bureaucrats. The secretary general, a professor and diplomat with no military experience, has had final authority to decide when and when not to bomb.

This has bruised feelings. In a letter that has never been published by the United Nations, Gen. Jean Cot of France, the former commander of the U.N. Protection Force in the former Yugoslav republics, complained to Boutros-Ghali in January that the duties of the force commander and the secretary general’s special representative were “incompatible’--a euphemistic way of saying their roles clashed--and that bureaucrats in New York “have rapidly made me the object of day and night harassment on minor problems.”

Cot also said the system for U.N. civilian approval of air support was so cumbersome as to weaken the credibility of air power as a deterrent. He requested the authority to order NATO air support on his own in case of attacks on the Sarajevo airport, a U.N. military base or any humanitarian operation.

But Boutros-Ghali refused and later removed Cot and Lt. Gen. Francis Briquemont of Belgium, who was the commander of U.N. troops in Bosnia, for challenging the authority of the United Nations.

The issue erupted again on April 23 when NATO decided to bomb the Bosnian Serbs for defying an ultimatum by continuing to shell Gorazde. The NATO decision was vetoed by Yasushi Akashi of Japan, the secretary general’s special representative, who insisted that the Serbs would end their siege that night. In the end, Akashi was proven correct, and many Western governments were probably relieved that there had been no bombing, but Akashi’s defiance of NATO still irritated many U.S. and European officials.

Largest Peacekeeping Operations 1. FORMER YUGOSLAV FEDERATION

Force size: 30,500

Fatalities: 77

Dates: March 1992, to present

Result: Unresolved

* 2. SOMALIA

Force size: 22,300

Fatalities: 100

Dates: May 1993, to present

Result: Unresolved

* 3. CAMBODIA

Force size: 22,000

Fatalities: 55

Dates: March 1992 to September 1993

Result: Elections held

* 4. BELGIAN CONGO (Now ZAIRE)

Force size: 19,800

Fatalities: 234

Dates: July 1960 - June 1964

Result: End of Katangan secession

* 5. SINAI DESERT (between Egyptian and Israeli forces)

Force size: 7,000

Fatalities: 52

Dates: October 1973 - July 1979

Result: Peace treaty

* 6. LEBANON

Force size: 6,900 maximum strength (now 5,200)

Fatalities: 195

Dates: March 1978 to present

Result: Still keeping peace after 16 years

* 7. MOZAMBIQUE

Force size: 6,800

Fatalities: 10

Dates: December 1992 to present

Result: Heading toward elections

* 8. CYPRUS

Force size: 6,400 maximum strength (now 1,200)

Fatalities: 163

Dates: March 1964 to present

Result: Still keeping peace after 30 years

* 9. SINAI DESERT (between Egyptian and Israeli forces)

Force size: 6,100

Fatalities: 90

Dates: November 1956 - June 1967

Result: Six-Day War followed their removal

* 10. NAMIBIA

Force size: 4,400

Fatalities: 6

Dates: April 1989 to March 1990

Result: Elections held

Tracking the Blue Helmets

The United States, despite boasting one of the world’s largest armies, has made a relatively small contribution, in terms of soldiers, to United Nations peacekeeping missions. Thirty countries, many of them with armed forces just a fraction of the size of the U.S. military, had more personnel assigned to U.N. contingents as of March 31. Following is a list of the top 25 nations in terms of soldiers currently committed, and the number of missions in which they are participating.

1. France (6 missions): 6,603

2. India (6): 5,891

3. Pakistan (5): 5,689

4. Bangladesh (9): 4,412

5. United Kingdom (3): 3,233

6. Jordan (4): 3,225

7. Malaysia (7): 2,558

8. Canada (10): 2,312

9. Egypt (6): 2,185

10. Nepal (3): 1,994

11. Belgium (5): 1,865

12. Netherlands (6): 1,737