U.S. Says It Won’t Fire on Copters : Cease-fire: The Iraqi aircraft are safe as long as they don’t threaten allied forces, Schwarzkopf vows.

While the United States is determined to shoot down Iraqi warplanes that take to the skies, Iraq’s helicopters will be allowed to fly unimpeded unless they fly toward allied troops, the head of American forces in the Persian Gulf said Saturday.

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf said his present orders are not to fire on Iraqi helicopter gunships, which Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is using to put down insurgencies in his country.

But if the helicopters are perceived as a threat to allied forces, their immunity ends, he said.

“The armed helicopters are not going to be a threat (to the allies), plain and simple,” the four-star general said in a brief meeting with reporters. “We’ve made it very clear to them (the Iraqis) that the armed helicopters will not fly toward, over or near our forces, and they won’t. Not for long.”

Asked if that meant Iraqi helicopters are safe as long as they stay clear of allied forces, Schwarzkopf hedged.

“I can’t say that,” he answered. “I can say at the present time my instructions are not to take any action against the armed helicopters.”

Rebel groups in Iraq, notably Kurdish separatists, charge that they have been repeatedly attacked by Hussein’s helicopters. The Kurdish rebels have driven government forces from the northern Iraqi city of Zakhu on the Turkish border and claim to have done so in the oil center, Kirkuk, and to be close to doing so in Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city. There has been no independent confirmation of the claims.

Schwarzkopf said the use of armed helicopters has decreased “dramatically” since a meeting last Sunday between allied commanders and Iraqi officers. The helicopters are being used primarily to move troops on the rebel-torn battlefield, Schwarzkopf said.

At last Sunday’s meeting in Safwan, a desert outpost in U.S.-occupied Iraq, the Iraqis were warned that any warplanes spotted in flight would be shot down as a violation of the tentative Gulf War cease-fire.

Schwarzkopf, in his comments to reporters, said the Iraqis acknowledged and accepted the warning.

Nevertheless, two Soviet-made Iraqi SU-22 warplanes flying north of Baghdad were shot down by U.S. Air Force jets on Wednesday and Friday. The first was downed near Tikrit, Hussein’s hometown; the second was flying over Kirkuk, long a center of Kurdish unrest.

“We gave them more than adequate warning; we told them what we thought we had to do, and we asked them not to do it,” Schwarzkopf said, “and they are the ones who went ahead and . . . ignored our request.”

He said he was at a loss to explain why the Iraqis chose to fly in defiance of the warning. He conceded that the message may be lost on Hussein.

“It may not be him (Hussein) that gets the message. I’m sure none of his pilots are relishing the fact that they are going to climb into the cockpit and fly today, if they’ve been given those orders.”

A senior U.S. officer, who asked not to be identified, said Hussein may be trying to salvage the remnants of his air force by shifting it to airfields that suffered less damage during aerial bombings by the allies.

The full reason behind the Iraqi helicopters’ exemption from U.S. attack is unclear. This apparent contradiction in policy appears to reflect Washington’s ambivalence toward the Iraqi rebels. While U.S. officials make no secret of their wish to see Hussein ousted, they do not necessarily see the Kurds in the north or the Shiite Muslim rebels fighting in the south as the best alternatives.

Allied commanders originally agreed to allow the Iraqis to use their helicopters because they needed them for “administrative” functions, such as moving around the country, according to U.S. military sources.

“They have abused that permission,” a senior officer said.