OAKLEY'S GAMBIT

By KEVIN FEDARKO.

He speaks his mind, keeps several steps ahead of his superiors and violates just about every other rule of the road for diplomats in the U.S. foreign service. Yet within four days of his arrival in Mogadishu last week, Robert Oakley had succeeded in shrugging off America's preoccupation with capturing clan leader Mohammed Farrah Aidid, arranged for the release of two hostages and hammered out a tentative cease-fire. Not a bad week for a man who, if the State Department handed out speeding tickets to freebooting statesmen, would have spent much of his 34-year-career in traffic court. His style places him in the ranks of troubleshooters like Philip Habib and Richard Armitage, whose authority derives not from their titles but from their willingness to operate in the highly volatile, here's-the-deal-dammit world of eyeball-to-eyeball diplomacy. The formula is simple: earn the trust of the principals, talk straight and cut the best deal you can; then tell the boss what you have done. If Oakley radiates a no-nonsense stability and mental toughness, it is partly because, in the words of Robert Carswell, former Deputy Treasury Secretary, ''his career had him in every hot spot there was outside of Russia.'' His first test came as a 22-year-old Navy ensign, when he helped devise a plan (called off at the last moment by Eisenhower) to relieve the ill-fated French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Subsequent postings took him to Beirut, as well as ambassadorships in Zaire, Somalia and Pakistan. His dead-serious demeanor, reflected in his craggy, Lincolnesque features, makes Oakley a poor companion for swapping jokes or, as one old friend put it, ''having him over to the house to get drunk in front of the fire.'' But such intensity has endeared him to colleagues, even those who received wake-up calls alerting them to overnight cables and demanding to know what should be done. ''It's always a little off-putting to get slammed up against the wall at 7:30 in the morning,'' says an admiring Richard Murphy, who worked with Oakley during the Reagan Administration. Oakley's penchant for stating, in his soft Louisiana drawl, exactly what he thinks can get him into trouble. As Ambassador to Zaire, he was nearly kicked out of the country when his unvarnished reports angered President Mobutu Sese Seko. ''He doesn't say thank you. He doesn't say please. It's just, boom: get the job done and go,'' says an American diplomat in Mogadishu. In Somalia, getting the job done involved landing, unarmed and virtually alone, ahead of U.S. troops last December as George Bush's special envoy. He spent 16 hours each day meeting with Somalis, breaking only for a two-mile run every afternoon at 5. Insisting that Somalis take the lead in rebuilding their own country, he approached not just clan leaders but also women, village elders and others who had been forced to the sidelines while gunmen shot the country to pieces. That won him a lasting respect that served him well last week when Clinton called him out of retirement to return as special envoy.

Friends also note that ''there is a great deal of sharing at home'' between Oakley and his wife Phyllis, now the second ranking State Department official for refugee programs. When dinner's over, says Murphy, ''he's the fastest washer-upper in the business.'' After last week, it was clear that distinction applies to more than just dirty dishes.

With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister/Washington and Andrew Purvis/Mogadishu