SOMALIA: U.N. Aid Chief Tests Local Links As Troops Leave

UNITED NATIONS, Dic 22 (IPS) - The head of the U.N. humanitarian aid programmes Thursday said that aid agencies will have to rely more greatly on local leaders in Somalia once U.N. troops depart the country.

U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Peter Hansen said, "There is a very great risk of increased fighting as the U.N. Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) withdraws," leaving the aid agencies there essentially unprotected.

As a result, once the remaining 15,000 UNOSOM troops depart as scheduled next March, Hansen said, "We will have to reach agreements with local Somali leaders, and we may have to rely on (Somali) national staff" to ensure safe aid provision.

But one thing that the U.N. Department for Humanitarian Affairs (DHA) and international aid agencies would not do is flee the country, he stressed. A previous near-abandonment of Somalia during intense clan fighting in 1991-92 contributed to the death of some 300,000 Somalis from war and famine.

The problem with too close a cooperation with Somalia's more than a dozen fractious major leaders and hundreds of community- based officials, Hansen conceded, is that some aid may be diverted to arming factions.

As matters stand, most U.N. officials predict that Somali leaders will resume their hard-fought battle to control the nation, which has remained inconclusive since dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was ousted in January 1991.

Hansen said that DHA was seeking to make contingency plans to map aid routes outside areas -- like the Somali capital, Mogadishu -- where too much aid could be diverted by leaders seeking a cut of the food and medicine supplies for their war efforts.

But he added that Mogadishu, the country's central port, could not be totally avoided; nor could the United Nations avoid cutting deals with even the most problematic leaders.

"I don't think any humanitarian agency today can totally avoid the risk of diversion" of food aid, Hansen said.

The under-secretary-general said he and other U.N. chiefs -- including U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata and U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) Director James Grant -- had pleaded for at least some U.N. troop support once UNOSOM left.

But the U.N. Security Council, eager to depart Somalia after UNOSOM's ill-fated two-year mission there, insisted on either a full pull-out or none at all, Hansen recalled.

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