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- <text id=93TT2374>
- <title>
- Feb. 01, 1993: Deadline Met, Sort Of
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Feb. 01, 1993 Clinton's First Blunder
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK
- WORLD, Page 19
- Deadline Met, Sort Of
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>The U.S. pulls a few troops out of Somalia, before the U.N.
- can move
- </p>
- <p> The Bush Administration met one last deadline--kind of,
- barely. Officials had said they hoped to at least begin a
- pullout from Somalia before Bill Clinton's Inauguration. Lo and
- behold, in the final hours of the Bush presidency about 1,100
- Marines were beginning to come home. Besides redeeming Bush's
- pledge, the move was clearly intended to prod the United Nations
- to hurry up in creating a regular peacekeeping force to take
- over from the U.S.-led ad hoc troops. American Marine Colonel
- Fred Peck, a military spokesman in Mogadishu, hopefully
- suggested that U.S. troops could begin to pass authority to the
- U.N. as early as Feb. 1.
- </p>
- <p> Fat chance. Creation of a force cannot start until the
- Security Council passes an authorizing resolution, and no drafts
- are yet circulating. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
- has discussed with some U.N. members possible troop
- contributions to a force that might exceed 20,000. But he has
- had only perfunctory contacts with President Clinton's advisers,
- and no one seems to be discussing the vital question of rules
- of engagement--that is, under what circumstances the
- peacekeepers could shoot. So the 25,000 U.S. and 12,000 other
- foreign troops remaining in Somalia may be stuck for weeks or
- months, and their duty remains hazardous. Last week Chief
- Warrant Officer Gus Axelson of the U.S. Marines took a bullet
- in the right shoulder while riding in a convoy in Mogadishu. He
- was the third U.S. military man wounded; one has been killed.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-