Bush Vows to Use All Diplomatic Means to Help Rebels : Iraq: The State Department says the U.S. hopes to provide ‘humanitarian aid’ to civilian refugees.

President Bush said Wednesday he will use all available diplomatic means to protect Kurdish and Shiite Muslim rebels in Iraq, but the United States will not take a hand militarily because U.S. forces have already “done the heavy lifting.”

“I will do my level best to use all diplomatic channels to bring this fighting to a halt,” Bush told reporters on a golf course in Jupiter, Fla. “But I do not want to push American forces beyond our (United Nations) mandate.

“Of course, I feel a frustration and a sense of grief for the innocents that are being killed brutally. But we are not there to intervene . . . that is not our purpose. It never was our purpose,” he said.

State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said the United States will urge the U.N. Security Council to condemn Iraq’s bloody suppression of insurgencies in the north and south of the country.

She said Washington hopes to provide “humanitarian aid” to civilians who have been forced from their homes by the fighting.

Iraqi troops recaptured two more northern cities from Kurdish rebels on Wednesday, the Associated Press reported from Diana, Iraq. But Kurdish forces claimed to still hold the countryside. Desperate civilians reported coming under fire as they fled into Iraq’s rugged northern mountains.

International relief workers estimated that 2 million to 3 million people have fled their homes in northern Iraq, where the month-old Kurdish revolt is being crushed by Saddam Hussein’s troops.

In the snowcapped mountains bordering Iran and Turkey, the refugees faced hunger and exposure and said they had been the target of indiscriminate attacks by government forces.

“We need help. The helicopters are killing us. We have no food. We will die,” a young woman engineer told the AP.

In the south, where mostly Shiite rebels had challenged government power, thousands of civilians crowded into impromptu refugee camps in a U.S.-occupied zone near the border with Kuwait. U.S. officials admitted that they did not know what would happen to the civilians when the troops pull out.

Tutwiler said loyalist forces “appear to have control of the majority of the towns” throughout Iraq.

“Scattered fighting continues in northern and southern Iraq between government forces and dissidents. Government forces appear to be advancing on the northern town of Sulaymaniyah, which is believed to be controlled by dissidents. Other major northern towns, including Irbil, appear to be in government control,” she said.

“The government continues to send additional reinforcements into northern Iraq,” she added. “In the south, clashes between government forces and dissidents continue in locations along the lower Tigris River. Iraqi forces remain deployed in and around the city of Basra.”

Meanwhile, Baghdad Radio urged the Kurdish civilians to return home. It promised them safety, a pledge that most of the Kurds seemed to disbelieve.

As the Iraqi army was poised to complete its rout of the rebels, Bush came under increasing criticism for refusing to intervene.

Sen. Al Gore (D-Tenn.), a possible Democratic candidate for President, told a press conference that Bush’s decision was morally wrong and diplomatically inept.

“We went over there for a moral purpose and now we are insisting that our American forces stand by and watch as helicopter gunships, responding to the orders of Saddam Hussein, open fire on innocent men, women and children--even firing on hospitals--simply because these people who are being killed responded to our request that they rise up against Saddam Hussein,” Gore said.

“I think its wrong,” he added. “I think that we should speak out. I think we should insist that helicopters of Saddam Hussein stop flying.”

As thousands of Kurdish refugees fled toward the Iraq-Turkey border, the Foreign Ministry in Ankara said Turkey is unwilling to admit them. A spokesman said the border will be closed.

Tutwiler said the threat to close the border has not yet been carried out. She said Morton Abramowitz, U.S. ambassador to Turkey, is discussing the situation with President Turgut Ozal’s government.

“Turkey would clearly need international (financial) assistance to handle any sizable refugee flow,” Tutwiler said.

A United Nations spokesman in Ankara said that a “human tragedy of monumental proportions” is developing. Thousands of Kurds are short of food and face starvation, particularly children who might be separated from parents and home, he said.

In London, British Prime Minister John Major promised help for the Kurdish refugees, although he did not specify how.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asked the West to supply immediate assistance to the refugees. She urged an airlift of blankets, food, tents and clothing.

A dozen Kurds seized the Iraqi Embassy in Brussels before dawn Wednesday and held the lone guard hostage before surrendering peacefully about five hours later.

The intruders burned some embassy papers, smashed furniture and replaced the Iraqi flag with the Kurdish flag. Iraqi Ambassador Zaid Haidar called it “a terrorist act.” All 12 demonstrators were arrested.

In front of the White House, 60 Kurds and Iraqis joined about 100 other demonstrators protesting Bush’s refusal to intervene.

Shouting “George Bush, you said so!” and “Saddam Hussein has got to go!” they held aloft photographs of Kurdish civilians maimed and burned by Iraqi forces.

“We feel betrayed,” said Hikmat Saco, a U.S. citizen since 1974, who said he was originally from the Kurdish part of Iraq. “George Bush pushed the Iraqi people to rise against Saddam Hussein. Then, when people started to rise up, he gave orders to let them shoot us down. Now they’ve given him permission to fly helicopters against us.”

Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly met with six Iraqi Shiite and Sunni Muslims who live in the United States. Three additional meetings with other groups, including Kurds, are expected later this week.

Times staff writers Paul Houston in Washington, William Tuohy in London and Joel Havemann in Brussels contributed to this report.