Next Step : A New Test for Peacekeepers : Lessons learned in Somalia will help U.N. avoid same pitfalls in Haiti, analysts say.

After the bloody debacle in Somalia that led to withdrawal of American forces in March, the United Nations was not expected to take on a similar mission anytime soon. But on paper at least, the U.N. takeover from American troops in Haiti due to take place in a few months bears a troubling resemblance to the ill-fated succession in Africa.

Nevertheless, analysts do not expect a repeat. For one thing, both the Clinton Administration and the United Nations learned some bitter lessons from the Somali experience. Former Ambassador Robert B. Oakley, who served as the special representative of Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton in Somalia and became an almost truculent critic of the U.N. mission there, says that both American and U.N. officials have planned the Haiti mission carefully and should avoid the pitfalls of Somalia.

“I’ve talked with a lot of my buddies,” he said in an interview Monday after the Americans went ashore, “and I have a pretty good feel about how they are going about it, and they have done a meticulous job in planning this.”

While “there’s always a question about what happens when you take a plan into the real world,” Oakley continued, he did not see a Somalia-like fiasco developing in Haiti.

Under the terms of the Security Council resolution that authorized the American intervention that began Monday, a United Nations peacekeeping force of 6,000 troops will take over from the U.S. mission “when a secure and stable environment has been established” and the United Nations “has adequate force capability and structure to assume the full range of its functions.”

Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the time for the takeover will be “measured in months, not weeks.”

In Somalia, the U.N. takeover was delayed for almost six months, much to the annoyance of American officials like Oakley, who accused Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali of dragging his feet. But Boutros-Ghali believed that the United Nations was being rushed into Somalia before the Americans had completed their job and before the U.N. force was strong enough to take over.

In this case, however, the secretary general appears to be working in step with the Clinton Administration. He issued a statement Monday welcoming “the news that a military intervention has been averted in Haiti and that conditions have been created for the peaceful implementation” of the Security Council resolution. U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright kept Boutros-Ghali closely informed as she managed to steer the resolution through the Security Council on July 31.

And, in line with the resolution, he announced that he was sending 15 military observers to Haiti at the end of the week, from France, Argentina, Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand and Bangladesh. The resolution authorizes him to send up to 60 observers to monitor the U.S.-led operation and to prepare for the future transfer of command to the United Nations.

The makeup of the peacekeeping force has not yet been announced, but it is expected to include 3,000 American troops. According to U.N. spokesmen, offers of troops have also come from Bangladesh, Bolivia, France, Canada, Suriname, Russia, Nepal and some Caribbean states. It is understood that the force will be led by American commanders.

This U.N. force is distinct from the American-led multilateral force of more than 2,000 soldiers and police from 24 countries that will soon become part of the American-led task force in Haiti.

The Security Council resolution, which was passed 12-0 on July 31 with China and Brazil abstaining and Rwanda absent, lays down three main tasks for the American-led multinational force:

* Facilitate the departure from Haiti of the military leadership.

* Allow the prompt return of deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his government.

* Establish and maintain “a secure and stable environment.”

The U.N. role, under the resolution, would be threefold: to help in the professionalization of the Haitian armed forces and a new, separate police force, to sustain the security established by the American-led force, and to prepare a favorable climate for free and fair legislative elections in December.

Although the resolution sets down these mainly political tasks for the U.N. peacekeeping mission, it is widely assumed that the American forces will initiate the activities as soon as possible.

In Somalia, in December 1992, President Bush sent 28,000 troops into the East African country on what he regarded as a solely humanitarian mission to safeguard relief operations in the midst of a bloody civil war.

Boutros-Ghali, however, believed that the Americans should have disarmed Somalia’s warring clans. When the Americans refused to do this, according to Boutros-Ghali, it failed to fulfill the Security Council’s mandate that it create “a secure environment” in Somalia.

When a multinational U.N. force took over from the United States and its allies in May, 1993, it did try to disarm the factions, a mission that led to the disastrous manhunt for Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid and the slaughter of 18 U.S. Rangers in an abortive raid on Aidid’s lieutenants. The deaths shocked Congress and the American public and prompted President Clinton to announce the withdrawal of the American troops by March.

The withdrawal of the Americans so weakened the U.N. mission in Somalia that most observers expect the United Nations to pull out altogether by the end of the year--leaving Somalia in renewed chaos.

Analysts see clear differences in Somalia and Haiti despite the similarity in the process of a U.N. mission replacing a U.S.-led multilateral force.

“First of all, the military problem is much, much smaller in Haiti,” said Edward C. Luck, senior policy adviser of the United Nations Assn. “You just don’t have the quantity of arms around nor the heavy weaponry around. And you don’t have these armed tribal groups involved in a civil war.”

“I think it’s much more doable in Haiti,” he went on. “I think the nature of the U.N. Haiti operation will hopefully be closer to traditional peacekeeping with an element of nation-building. The Somalia mission turned into peace enforcement. I don’t think you are going to get to that in Haiti.”

Luck also believes that the United States, if faced with problems in Haiti, will stick it out and not rush off as it did in Somalia, dooming the U.N. operation there.

“We were willing to go into Haiti with guns blazing,” he said. “We ought to be able to stick around if things get rough.”

Oakley also pointed out that both the United States and the United Nations now agree on the importance of creating a professional police force in Haiti. He insists that the United Nations was not committed to this in Somalia.

“This time, everyone understands you have to do that if you’re going to have a neutral body to supervise law and order in a difficult environment,” he said.

He also said that the United States recognizes that the Americans will be “the prime mover” in the Haiti operation, even when the United Nations takes over. The United States refused to accept this in Somalia.

But Oakley also sees evident problems ahead. “The most difficult,” he said, “is the question of how much are the U.N. and the U.S. going to be involved in running Haiti’s affairs once the U.N role kicks in.”