U.N. to Send 6,000 Troops to Sierra Leone

The U.N. Security Council voted Friday to send a 6,000-member force to Sierra Leone to help restore peace after an eight-year civil war in the African nation.

On Monday, the U.N. is expected to approve sending 10,000 troops and police officers to East Timor to take over peacekeeping duties from an Australian-led multinational force.

Combined, the two new forces will double the number of U.N. peacekeepers deployed globally, and plans are underway to send as many as 20,000 peacekeepers to Congo.

Proponents say the new U.N. operations will revive the world body’s role as an enforcer of security in troubled regions. But the creation of the new forces also has sparked debate about how much the U.N. should intervene in nations’ internal affairs, how long its forces should stay and how the operations should be financed.

The East Timor operation will support a U.N. civilian administration that will include judges, civil engineers and administrators and will oversee the rebuilding of the devastated territory and its transition to independence. East Timor voted overwhelmingly in a U.N.-administered election Aug. 30 to secede from Indonesia, which invaded the territory in 1975.

The U.N.’s peacekeeping force in East Timor alone is expected to initially cost at least $458 million, and to be even more expensive and difficult than the effort in Kosovo, said Bernard Miyet, undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations. The hand-over of responsibility from the Australian-led force will take place in the next several months.

As the U.N.’s role expands, so does concern about how the cash-strapped organization will support its broadening endeavors. Because U.N. members have lagged in their payments for the Kosovo operation--only $42 million of a $125-million assessment levied on member states has been paid so far--there are questions about the financing of new operations.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday urged member states to pay their share promptly.

“Once a crisis has broken out and we have been given the mandate, we have to be given the resources to make it viable,” he said.

The United States is considered both a hero and a villain at the U.N., lauded for its leadership but criticized for not paying its dues. The U.S. has provided more aid than most countries to Sierra Leone--about $127 million over the past two years--and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Monday committed an additional $55 million to resettle refugees.

But as with the current Australian-led operation and the coming U.N. effort in East Timor, the U.S. contribution to the Sierra Leone force will be limited to logistic support, equipment and personnel; no U.S. combat troops will join in.

More significant, the U.N. says Washington owes it $1.7 billion for its general operation, and the debt is making the world body scramble to stay on its feet. The U.S. also has unilaterally reduced its share of peacekeeping payments from 31% to 25%, which means the world body has a shortfall even before it launches a new mission, U.N. officials say.

“It’s a juggling act,” said Joseph Connor, the U.N. finance and management chief. Resources are not the only problem facing U.N. peacekeeping operations. The U.N. has been criticized recently for not being able to deploy forces quickly enough to move into trouble spots. Once there, the critics say, the forces are not given broad enough powers to effectively prevent trouble.

In East Timor, for example, Australia quickly assembled a multinational group last month to wrest control of the territory from rogue militias backed by the Indonesian army, imposing peace while the U.N. organizes its own force.

Reports from Kosovo--where peacekeepers led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have been in place since the alliance drove out Yugoslav forces with a 78-day air campaign last spring-- described cases in which police officers and troops were hesitant to step in while houses were burned, stores looted and citizens beaten.

Annan hopes to overcome those problems. In Sierra Leone, the U.N. force won’t be responsible for maintaining security--that task will remain with the West African peacekeeping force that helped end the eight-year civil war in July. The U.N. will help disarm rebels, protect aid workers and integrate soldiers--especially child warriors forced into the conflict--back into society.

Annan said the force must be “large and capable and operate under robust rules of engagement,” and must be allowed to take “necessary action.”

Talks are continuing about a similar mandate for the East Timor force, although the U.N. had to drop plans for a human rights investigation there after China, a Security Council member, objected.