Kurds Picket Bush as Quayle Says U.S. Can’t Intervene

As hundreds of Kurdish-Americans picketed President Bush in Orange County on Thursday, Vice President Dan Quayle condemned Saddam Hussein’s suppression of Kurdish rebels in Iraq but said the United States cannot inject itself into that country’s civil war because it is “an internal matter.”

Quayle was addressing a luncheon in Los Angeles as President Bush arrived at a Newport Beach hotel for talks with Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu.

Several hundred people of Kurdish descent, dressed in traditional clothing, gathered outside the hotel to protest the U.S. decision not to pursue Iraqi forces beyond the cease-fire line or to provide military aid to rebels. As Bush’s motorcade arrived, they chanted: “President Bush, why, why (do) Kurdish children have to die?”

Quayle said in his address that sending American troops farther into Iraq would risk an escalation of the sort that mired the United States in Vietnam.

The vice president told reporters before the speech: “I want to disabuse you, and hopefully the world, of the idea that the United States should in fact consider occupying Iraq for a long period of time . . . until they sort out their internal matters.”

Times staff writers Dave Lesher and Eric Lichtblau contributed to this story.