N EW ZEALAND-born merchant "adventurer", David Morris, was murdered in Somalia

around April 26. His 21-year-old son Tyrone had been shot dead in a Mogadishu

street about 18 months earlier, but that tragedy only drove Morris to continue

his business in the anarchic African country.

Morris was well-known in

Cambodia, making his fortune supplying food and drink to the thousands of UN

soldiers and employees in the lead-up to the May 1993 elections. He followed the

UN out of Cambodia into Somalia. His contract in Somalia with the UN was said to

be worth $50 million. He was always at loggerheads with the UN, which he called

incompetent in pursuing its mission.

Morris, described as "a diminutive,

work-obsessed and hard-drinking" figure, scoffed at the dangers and drove about

Mogadishu in an armoured troop carrier guarded by Khmer gunmen he took with him

out of Cambodia. Reports quote UN peacekeepers as saying his bodyguards were

former Khmer Rouge guerillas.

Efforts to pick up Morris' body have to

date been unsuccessful, and have sparked off clashes between warring tribal

factions.