Military Intervention

Mexico City. -- Last week's overthrow of Haiti's first democratically elected president may for the first time spark joint military action by the Organization of American States (OAS).If so, the action to reinstall President Jean-Bertrand Aristide would mark a turning point for a 43-year-old organization that has been little more than an obscure debating society long dominated by the United States.The OAS early Thursday voted to send its secretary general and representatives of eight countries to read the riot act to the military junta in Port-au-Prince.

WASHINGTON -- The United States will begin sending about 600 military trainers and engineers to Haiti on Thursday as part of a United Nations-backed plan to stabilize the country and restore its exiled president, administration officials said.A U.S. Navy ship is scheduled to depart Norfolk, Va., Thursday with about 250 military specialists and tons of construction equipment aboard, then pick up scores of Navy engineers in Puerto Rico before arriving in Port-au-Prince Oct. 10, the officials said.

Paris. -- It is the beginning of the end for Sarajevo, and probably the better for it. The Western world has found the city's sufferings an embarrassment. Nothing will be done for those who remain there, or for the principle of a secular and democratic, non-ethnic republic, which is what the defense of Sarajevo has been all about.Now the women and children are leaving. The International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations will not officially help the evacuation, because that would imply complicity in the ''ethnic cleansing'' of Sarajevo.

Clerics will call for steps to end suffering in Bosnia and SomaliaAppeals for governmental action to end the violence and suffering in Bosnia and Somalia will be heard this weekend in Maryland's churches, mosques and synagogues.The combined religious response to the bloodshed, torture and starvation will begin with Muslim worship at noon tomorrow and in the Jewish community tomorrow evening and Saturday morning as part of what is called a Sabbath of Prayer and Concern for Bosnia and Somalia.

Boston -- American opinion is moving hesitantly toward military intervention in the former Yugoslavia.Elite opinion: The matter is not on the popular or political agendas -- but neither was Kuwait two years ago this spring. The parallel between the Persian Gulf and Bosnia-Herzegovina may yet catch the attention of President Bush, in these pre-election days.The official American position remains that military intervention is not under consideration.The press calls for more severe economic and political reprisals against Serbia for its aggressions, but some in the press and the policy community now are arguing that the threat, and if necessary the use, of military force has become a necessity not only to check the killing in Bosnia-Herzegovina but to validate the principle the United States and the international community attempted to establish during the Iraq crisis and its aftermath.

WASHINGTON -- A team of experts sent to Bosnia b President Clinton to assess the plight of civilians caught in the fighting has urged Washington to seriously consider military intervention to end the suffering.In a draft report, the group recommended considering civilian "safe havens" protected by international forces and stronger military action to both ensure the delivery of aid and silence the heavy artillery Serbian forces have used to shell cities.But at the instruction of senior officials, the group withheld recommendations on the use of force -- which run counter to current administration policy -- from Congress in closed-door briefings last week.

London. -- The United Nations has been called many things in its time. ''Ce machin'' by Charles de Gaulle, a ''cesspool'' by one mayor of New York and ''UNO'' until quite recently in Britain. Now practically every week someone important is saying something nice about it, or there is a new appeal for its intervention to sort out some contention somewhere.Last weekend it was Russia and Georgia issuing a joint call for the U.N. to take a look at the ethnic strife that is bedeviling their relationship -- the first time one of the old superpowers has thought the U.N. could do something in its own backyard.

Maybe we should have given the food to the media and le them take it to Somalia. It seems like they outnumber our troops anyway.On second thought that wouldn't have worked.The photographers would have taken pictures of the food. And the anchormen would have eaten it.So I guess we need the military after all. Though they did seem like props on the first night they waded ashore at Mogadishu.Navy Seals, heavily armed and their faces covered in camouflage paint, were surrounded by TV crews wearing shorts and T-shirts.

Last week's dispatch of a U.S. quick reaction force to Somalia bodes ill for the U.N.'s new role as global peacemaker. What started out as a U.N. humanitarian and peacekeeping operation has turned into a United States-backed U.N. war against one warlord, Mohamed Farah Aidid.The pursuit of General Aidid resembles the United States's 1989 intrusion into Panama to grab strongman Manuel Noriega. The bad guy has been identified, a price has been placed on his head, and the U.S. Army Rangers have been sent in to hunt him down.

Croatia's recapture this week of a strategic chunk of territory seized four years ago by breakaway Serb rebels marks the definitive end to the winter cease fire negotiated by former President Jimmy Carter. It reflects subtle changes in the balance of forces in the former Yugoslavia.Last year at this time Bosnian Serbs were menacing Muslim towns almost at will. No more. While they can shell Sarajevo with the same impunity their Krajina Serb counterparts could fling rockets at the Croatian capital of Zagreb yesterday, the fragile U.S.-engineered alliance of Croatian and Muslim forces is taking effect.