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NAPLES, Italy (Reuter) - Defense Secretary William Perry ruled out sending a U.S. combat force to Zaire but said Washington was ready to take part in a Canadian proposal to parachute food to thousands of Rwandan refugees in Zaire if necessary.
"We are not planning a military operation. We are not planning an operation to send military forces in to perform peacekeeping, to perform security stabilization, in Zaire," Perry said.
He told Navy and Marine Corps personnel at the start of a globe-circling trip that he expected final plans to be made in the next day or two for a possible Canadian-led multinational force in central Africa that could air-drop aid to refugees or quietly oversee food distribution on the ground.
Bowing to Canadian pressure to get an aid program going, Perry also told reporters:
"If they move forward with the air-drop operation, we would certainly be in there as a full participant in it ... If it involves air drops the United States will play a large role in that we have perhaps the greatest facilities available to do that."
While the return of more than a half-million Rwandan refugees to their country from camps in Zaire has eased the crisis, relief experts estimate several hundred thousand more Rwandans remain displaced in Zaire and could face hunger and disease if they are not helped.
The U.N. food aid agency said a parachute drop should go ahead only if relief cannot reach refugees by land.
"We have food already packaged (for air drops)," World Food Program (WFP) spokeswoman Patricia Clough said in Rome. "But we are reluctant to do it -- only if there is absolutely no other way of reaching people."
Canada, impatient with international indecision on the refugee crisis, proposed Tuesday that a military headquarters for relief operations be set up in neighboring Uganda.
Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, announcing the proposal in Ottawa, also said Canada was pushing for air drops in Zaire to help those most affected.
Perry cautioned Wednesday that any multinational military effort led by Canada would have to get permission from Zaire, Uganda and Rwanda to send cargo planes in at low altitude to drop supplies in Zaire.
"The extent of the support we are prepared to do and are standing by ready to do is providing the logistics support and, if necessary, security support to deliver humanitarian aid -- and only under conditions where a forced entry is not required," he stressed.
Perry said the United States already had nearly 400 military logistics personnel at airports in Mombasa, Kenya, in Entebbe, Uganda, and in Kigali, Rwanda. He declined to say how many more troops might be sent if a military humanitarian operation is mounted.
"I do not want at this time to sign up to any number. That is going to depend very, very much what the mission is and what the U.S. participation in that mission is going to be," he added.
"I believe in the next day or two there will be a determination whether a multinational force will be finally formed, what its missions will be," Perry said Wednesday.
The United Nations has authorized a Canadian-led multinational military relief effort, but so far there has been no agreement among several dozen nations who have tentatively offered to take part in that effort on how it might be done.
The U.S. military, which has some 50 military cargo planes standing by in Europe to join in humanitarian relief efforts, has in recent years parachuted food supplies to Muslims in Bosnia and to Kurds in northern Iraq.
Although President Clinton has tentatively approved participation in a military aid effort, no final decision has been made.
Perry will visit American troops in Bosnia Thursday, the Thanksgiving Holiday, and then go to Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Japan and California before returning to Washington Dec. 4.