NEWS ANALYSIS : CRISIS IN CENTRAL AFRICA : Bitter Taste of ‘Realism’ Causes Row Over U.N. Peacekeeping in Rwanda : Security Council: Some members are upset that U.S. pressure delayed dispatch of troops to war-torn nation.

After their first encounter with the Clinton Administration’s new policy directive on peacekeeping, several members of the U.N. Security Council feel bruised, chastened and somewhat angry.

The test case came last week when the council buckled under U.S. pressure and delayed the dispatch of 5,500 more troops to ravaged Rwanda. The Americans, explaining their reasons for the delay, cited the need for a realistic assessment of what can be done in that woeful Central African country. “Realism” is the touchstone of Presidential Policy Directive 25, or PPD25, as the directive is known in peacekeeping circles.

But the call for realism undermined ambassadors who believed in the greater need for an emotional, clarion outcry against genocide in Rwanda. “This was the wrong issue on which to test PPD25,” said a European ambassador on the 15-member Security Council. “There is a humanitarian disaster in Rwanda, and the members of the council wanted to go on record that they were ready to do something.”

The council did pass a resolution authorizing some immediate help and possibly 5,500 more troops later, but the resolution--with its plethora of conditions--did not resonate with the kind of commitment and dynamism that some ambassadors had wanted.

U.S. officials, however, were pleased with their handiwork. U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright, defending the toned-down resolution, told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee a few hours later that “sending a U.N. force into the maelstrom of Rwanda without a sound plan of operations would be folly.”

“Emotions can produce wonderful speeches and stirring Op-Ed pieces,” she went on. “But emotions alone cannot produce policies that will achieve what they promise. If we do not keep commitments in line with capabilities, we will only further undermine U.N. credibility and support.”

Some ambassadors were persuaded by this argument. A second European ambassador said that the first encounter with PPD25 had created “a bracing, sobering and beneficial impact on the council.” But even this supporter acknowledged that U.S. diplomats had managed the resolution clumsily, needlessly offending some members.

New Zealand Ambassador Colin Keating and Nigerian Ambassador Ibrahim A. Gambari were obviously upset by the U.S. maneuvers. French Ambassador Jean-Bertrand Merimee also seemed troubled. Rumors circulated that a few others could not stifle their annoyance over what had happened.

At issue were the size and the operating plan for the U.N. mission in Rwanda. When a mysterious plane crash killed Rwanda’s Hutu president April 6 and set off mass killing of the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus, the United Nations had 2,500 peacekeeping troops in Rwanda. Their job was mainly to supervise a cease-fire between the Hutu-dominated government army and the Tutsi-dominated rebel force known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Under a peace agreement, this cease-fire was supposed to lead to national elections.

In the first hours of violence, 10 Belgian peacekeeping troops were slaughtered when they tried in vain to save the moderate Hutu prime minister from execution by marauding Rwandan troops. The Belgian government quickly pulled its troops out of Rwanda and helped persuade the Security Council that it was futile to keep a large peacekeeping force there. The council cut the force drastically, ordering it to do no more than try to mediate a cease-fire, observe what was going on and supervise humanitarian relief if possible. By mid-May, there were only 450 U.N. soldiers there.

As the horrendous killings mounted, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called on the Security Council to change course and dispatch an enlarged force of at least 5,500 peacekeepers to deal with the nightmare.

But on May 5, President Clinton signed PPD25--the Administration’s new policy on peacekeeping. Kneaded by U.S. officials for more than a year, this policy pledged the United States to ask tough questions before taking part or even approving any U.N. peacekeeping mission. Rwanda called PPD25 into action for the first time.

Boutros-Ghali proposed that the peacekeepers land at Kigali’s airport in the center of the country and fan out from there to assist humanitarian relief and to deter attacks on civilians who had fled their homes. But Albright objected to this plan during closed-door meetings of the council, saying that the United States favored sending U.N. troops in smaller numbers to the refugee camps just inside the Rwandan borders. She called this approach “less complex” and derided the idea of launching a U.N. operation “through an airport at the epicenter of a civil war.” She said that chances for success were slim with Boutros-Ghali’s plan.

On top of this, she said she doubted whether the secretary general could persuade governments to give him enough troops. The United States itself would provide logistics support if the mission was worthwhile--but no troops.

The council thus had to wrestle with two military approaches, which were quickly dubbed the American “outside-in” plan and the secretary general’s “inside-out” plan. As a compromise, Nigeria’s Gambari, who is serving as president of the council this month, proposed a resolution that simply authorized a force and left it up to the commanders in the field to decide whether it made more sense to start from Kigali or the borders. After all, he argued, none of the ambassadors has a military background.

On May 13, the 15 members of the council, including the United States, seemed close to accepting the Gambari compromise. But the U.S. delegation still had questions about it, and the ambassadors decided to consult their capitals over the following weekend before voting.

Last Monday, the U.S. delegation returned with a host of doubts about the resolution and a new proposal: The Security Council should vote only to augment the current force to 800 and to return 150 military observers who had been evacuated to Nairobi, Kenya. A larger peacekeeping operation could be discussed later.

This surprised most of the ambassadors and infuriated some. “We had to have a resolution that the newspapers would say authorized 5,500 troops,” an angry European ambassador said later. After hours of wrangling, the council finally voted after midnight in favor of a new compromise resolution.

The resolution dispatched the small numbers that the Americans had proposed but approved in principle a future force of 5,500. But these troops would go to Rwanda only if the secretary general satisfied the council--particularly the United States, with its power of veto--that the two belligerents would cooperate with the United Nations, that a cease-fire was in sight, that troops were available, that the mission would last only a short time and that “the concept of operations” (either inside-out or outside-in) was acceptable. In short, Albright had pressured the Security Council into asking the tough questions that PPD25 said must be asked.

Although the resolution was adopted unanimously, the vote reflected bitter division. “I cannot conceal my delegation’s disappointment that this resolution only approves a very modest first phase,” New Zealand’s Keating told the council. “This resolution stops short of what is really necessary . . . the commitment of the council to an operation that would make a start at the task of protecting civilians at risk.”

Some ambassadors were obviously irritated over the pressure to mold their resolution to fit PPD25. “We cannot have one member of the council deciding that all peacekeeping operations must follow its agenda,” the angry European ambassador said. “What if the Russians decided to do that? Or China? What if one country decides to veto all peacekeeping missions that have to do with human rights? We cannot have that.”

But Albright insisted that most of the ambassadors welcomed the exercise. “I think the other members of the Security Council are appreciative of the guidelines that we are setting, creating some kind of rationale for which peacekeeping operations are doable and which ones are pie in the sky,” she told a television interviewer a few days later.