The deployment would send as many as 5,000 Army and Air Force personnel to the volatile region along the Rwanda-Zaire border where up to 1.1 million refugees are reportedly in desperate need of food, water and shelter. The U.S. contingent would include up to 1,000 U.S. ground troops sent to secure an airport and a short stretch of road near the refugee camps, and the entire U.S. force would stay about four months.
"Any deployment of our forces involves risk,'' Defense Secretary William Perry said. But he and other officials expressed hope that the operation would be peaceful because its purpose is to deliver food and medical supplies, not to intervene in the tribal fighting that recently forced the refugees out of their camps.
The total international force is likely to consist of more than 15,000 troops from a dozen countries, including Britain, France and some African nations, officials said.
White House spokesperson Mike McCurry listed several questions still to be answered and conditions to be met before a final U.S. decision is made.
Assuming those matters are resolved at a planning meeting to be held today in New York, the Clinton administration would for the second time in three years send U.S. military forces to help cope with the humanitarian consequences of the genocidal, ethnic massacres that ravaged Rwanda in 1994.
Clinton sent troops to Rwanda two years ago on a relief mission similar to the one contemplated now. At that time, administration officials said they had laid to rest the specter of the 1993 U.S. mission in Somalia, a debacle that many volunteer groups and relief agencies feared would block the administration from ever becoming involved in another African crisis spot.
Nevertheless, the administration approached the latest request for help with extreme caution. Clinton made his decision under intense pressure from Canada, France and U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and after long hours of heated discussions within his administration.
The hesitant approach to this effort traces its roots to Somalia in the sense that an ill-defined, open-ended military involvement would risk disaster. McCurry said the structure of the U.S. effort "reflects our desire to have a very carefully constructed mission that avoids some of the pitfalls we've seen in the past.''
Yesterday, France and Britain welcomed Clinton's decision and announced they would participate in the relief mission. A Canadian general is to be in operational command, McCurry said, but U.S. forces will remain under the command of U.S. officers.
Pentagon officials said the U.S. ground troops to be sent to Zaire probably will come from the light infantry brigade of the Southern Europe Task Force, based in Potenza, Italy.
According to Canadian officials, the first 350 Canadian troops would be sent to the region with 48 hours after the mission is approved by the U.N. Security Council. The council is scheduled to begin work on an authorizing resolution today and could finish it by tomorrow, diplomats in New York said.
McCurry said one condition for U.S. participation is that agreement be reached on who is to pay for the African units.
The primary assignment of the U.S. ground troops, McCurry and other officials said, would be to secure the airport at Goma, Zaire, and a three-mile stretch of road from Goma to the Rwandan border that the refugees would use if they returned to their home country. The United States also will have "primary responsibility for maintaining airlift for the supplies and people going into the area,'' Perry said.
But it remained unclear how a deployment to Goma - where relief agencies are already at work - would make possible aid deliveries to hundreds of thousands of refugees in the countryside west of Goma who are under the control of militant Hutu militias who do not want the refugees to go back to Rwanda. The Goma airport, under Tutsi control, is within reach of the Hutu militias' heavy weapons, according to reports from the region.
The issue of the Hutu militias' control of the refugees was one of several that administration officials said had to be resolved before the United States would agree to join the planned force.
The troops on the mission will have "robust rules of engagement,'' McCurry said, but their assignment is not to take on the militias or any of the other warring factions in eastern Zaire.
"We are talking about a dangerous environment,'' State Department spokesman Glyn Davies said. "But I don't think at this stage anyone is anticipating that the militias would be reckless enough to try to take on an international force of some considerable size that is contemplated here.''
The administration made clear that the goal of the mission was to protect humanitarian agencies providing food and medicine and to facilitate the voluntary repatriation of Rwandan refugees. Officials were just as clear in outlining what U.S. troops will not do - namely, disarm local militants, conduct forced entries or police refugee camps.
The United States still has not secured agreements with Zaire, Rwanda and rebel factions in Zaire guaranteeing safe entry for the multi-national force, which the White House called a pre-condition for following through on the mission.
Clinton pledged U.S. support for the operation in a 15-minute telephone conversation yesterday morning with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, and he consulted with congressional leaders Tuesday and yesterday. However, he did not appear in public yesterday to explain his decision.
Aides said he will probably do so today or tomorrow, once a final commitment has been made. During the same appearance, he is likely to detail the need for U.S. troops to remain in Bosnia longer than originally planned as part of peace-keeping efforts there.