U.N. Demands Hussein Stop Repressing Kurds and Allow Access to Aid : Iraq: Security Council resolution is an unusual comment on a nation’s internal affairs.

The U.N. Security Council, declaring a threat to international peace, demanded Friday that Saddam Hussein stop repressing the Kurds within Iraq and allow immediate access by humanitarian organizations to offer emergency assistance.

The resolution was an unusual U.N. comment on another nation’s internal affairs, and some delegates argued against it on those grounds. The language of the measure met those objections by depicting the massive flow of refugees across borders as a threat to world peace and security and a humanitarian concern, not just an internal Iraqi matter.

The measure stated that the Security Council was “gravely concerned by the repression of the Iraqi civilian population in many parts of Iraq, including most recently in Kurdish-populated areas.”

The Turkish government, meanwhile, intending to keep masses of Kurdish refugees from swarming across the frontier, has begun setting up a camp just across the border in northern Iraq intended to house and care for 100,000 Kurds fleeing President Hussein’s army, officials in the border region said. The Turks say they hope the camp will eventually house 250,000.

Some Turkish troops have also crossed a few miles into Iraq and are providing security at the camp, which already houses a few thousand, the officials said.

Turkey’s Anatolian News Agency reported Friday that 246,000 refugees are seeking a haven along the southeastern Turkish border. With an estimated 5 million indigenous Kurds, Turkey already has the largest Kurdish population in the world, followed by Iran with 4 million and Iraq with 3.5 million.

Kurdish Institute spokesmen in Paris estimate that as many as 2 million Kurds may be attempting to flee Iraqi military forces.

In other developments:

Kurdish leaders quickly rejected a personal offer of amnesty from Hussein, announced Friday by Iraq’s official news agency.

The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, spiritual leader of neighboring Iran, where thousands of Kurds have fled seeking shelter, urged the rebels to continue fighting and “finish the job.”

One person was killed and several were injured as Kurdish demonstrators stormed Iraqi diplomatic buildings in at least six cities.

The United Nations

The Security Council resolution passed 10-3, with Cuba, Yemen and Zimbabwe voting against and China and India abstaining. It was the smallest margin for passage since the Security Council began voting measures against Iraq on Aug. 2, hours after Hussein’s military invaded Kuwait.

In its vote, the council insisted that Iraq allow immediate access by humanitarian organizations to all parts of the nation and make available necessary facilities for relief operations.

The resolution called on U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to address the urgent needs of Iraq’s displaced population and, if necessary, to send a fact-finding mission to the region and report back to the council on the plight of the Kurds.

On Monday, the United Nations plans to launch a special appeal for humanitarian assistance for refugees fleeing the violence in Iraq.

In his remarks before the vote, Turkish Ambassador Mustafa Askin--whose country has now closed its border to the refugee flow--said about 100,000 refugees from Iraq have crossed the Turkish border and hundreds of thousands more may be on the way.

“The situation in the northern borders adjacent to Iraq are especially alarming,” he said. “ . . . The people at the border are under intense mortar fire, and some of the shells have fallen across the border.

“It is conceivable 1 million people might be forced to move from Iraq to Turkey,” he said. “Turkey will not allow its borders to be overrun.”

U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering told council members that the United States is profoundly concerned about the plight of displaced civilians who are suffering because of the brutality of Hussein’s regime, and added, “The resolution insists that Iraq meet its humanitarian responsibilities.”

Iran’s ambassador told the council that his nation has provided refuge for 100,000 civilians fleeing Iraq, and “many more have been straggling across the borders.”

“The pace of developments in the north is unbelievably rapid,” said Ambassador Kamal Kharrazi. “The most conservative estimates are half a million Iraqi civilians will take refuge in Iran in the next few days.”

British Ambassador David Hannay said the resolution was designed to send a clear message to Hussein that he must stop oppression and killing inside Iraq as well as give strong backing to humanitarian relief efforts.

“Our only regret is it has taken this council so long to respond to the human tragedy which has been unfolding before our eyes in the mountains of northern Iraq in recent days,” Hannay said.

Iraq’s U.N. envoy denied that his government was attacking the refugees. Ambassador Abdul Amir Anbari told council members before the vote that the thousands of refugees went north seeking food and medicine because of the economic embargo the United Nations leveled against his nation.

“The very perpetrator is shedding crocodile tears for the plight of the Iraqi people,” he charged. “ . . . This draft resolution is a flagrant, illegitimate intervention in Iraq’s internal affairs.”

On the Border

While waiting for the influx of international aid, villagers from Turkish Kurdistan have started up their own modest aid program, trucking food and blankets up the mountains to the newly established refugee camp on the Iraqi side of the border.

On Friday, young men and mules hauled sacks of food up the mountainside past Iraqi Border Post No. 49, which has become the informal name of the refugee camp, while a Turkish bulldozer prepared a road to allow trucks to reach the camp itself.

“The world’s made promises of refugee aid in the past and let us down,” said Sehabettim Harput, governor of Turkey’s southeastern province of Hakari. “They must understand that it is not just a problem for Turkey, but for the world.”

The biggest problem is transporting food to the remote mountain area. The nearest airport is several hours away by roads that weave along mountainsides through rock falls, snowfields and deep, muddy potholes.

The government of President Turgut Ozal has warned Baghdad not to drive the refugees into Turkey following the collapse of the Kurdish revolt in March, which welled up after Iraq’s defeat in the Persian Gulf War at the hands of the U.S.-led military coalition.

Most of the refugees are Kurdish Muslims, but their ranks include Turkomans and Assyrian Christians as well.

“My house was destroyed by a rocket in Kirkuk,” said Bashira Oshan, an Assyrian Christian refugee whose feet were swollen by a five-day walk to the Turkish border in a pair of rubber overshoes. “It’s not safe in Iraq. Please let me go to America. I have two sisters in Chicago.”

At the camp, after days of danger, misery and cold, about 4,000 refugees were enjoying a rare respite in bright sunshine Friday. Bright Kurdish clothes were drying on bushes, campfires sizzled with newly butchered meat, and families were putting up basic tents with nylon sheeting and branches.

One family--with sick babies and exhausted old people among its members--was rebuilding a sandbagged Iraqi guard post as its new home, overlooking a 10-acre meadow where mules and goats grazed against a backdrop of spectacular mountain beauty.

The Iraqi Kurds are a hardy mountain people, but after a week on the road, with inadequate food or none at all, resistance to disease has diminished.

“Maybe tens of people are dying each day, but they are living a frightful tragedy,” Governor Harput said. Turkish press reports, unconfirmed by officials, speak of up to 550 deaths a day. Nobody at Border Post No. 49 knew of anyone who had died there, although many knew of deaths on the road from cold, hunger and wounds in battle.

“My baby was born on the same day that the shelling forced us to leave home,” said one stoic Kurdish mother called Rabin. “Then we had to walk for four days. But the baby and I are fine. No problem.”

The Amnesty

Kurdish rebel leaders in Iraq and Syria said they would not consider the Hussein amnesty offer, which the Iraqi News Agency said applied to all Kurds “except those who committed murder, rape and looting during acts of rioting or treason.”

“It is not the first amnesty which has been offered by the government,” said Jalal Talabani, a leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Damascus, Syria. “Previously, the Iraqi government granted similar amnesties over the past 10 years. This one doesn’t seem to be serious.”

In Iran

In Friday prayer ceremonies broadcast throughout Iran, the Ayatollah Khamenei accused Iraq of turning on its own people rather than facing the military occupation by the United States and coalition forces in southern Iraq.

“Foreign forces have made themselves at home in Iraq,” the Shiite Muslim fundamentalist religious leader said. “They have pitched camp behind the walls of Basra and Nasiriyah. And yet, the inhuman Iraqi regime is pretending not to notice. Instead, it has unleashed its hatred against its own people.”

Iran’s official news agency reported Friday that 120,000 refugees thought to be mostly Kurds had already crossed into Iran seeking asylum. The agency said that the bulk of the refugees had entered through the border posts of Pranshahr in West Azerbaijan Province and farther south in Nowsoud in Bakhtaran Province.

“Reports from border areas indicate that hundreds of thousands of others are waiting,” the Iranian agency said.

Worldwide

The most serious incident involving Kurdish demonstrators occurred outside the Iraqi Consulate in Istanbul, where one man was shot to death and two others were wounded after 40 Kurdish demonstrators began stoning the six-story building.

The semiofficial Anatolian News Agency quoted Turkish police as saying the shots were fired from inside the consulate. However, the police did not enter the building or make any arrests, the agency said.

In London, demonstrators briefly occupied the Iraqi Embassy building in the fashionable Queensgate area. The demonstrators threw pictures of Hussein onto the street and called on Western governments to send military aid to Iraqi Kurds. “They are exterminating our people!” one demonstrator shouted as he was being led away by police.

A similar attempt to occupy the Iraqi Embassy in Bonn, the German capital, was repelled by police. Demonstrations also took place in Sofia, Bulgaria; Prague, Czechoslovakia, and the Swiss capital, Bern.

Times staff writer Goldman reported from the United Nations and free-lance writer Pope from northern Iraq. Times staff writers Rone Tempest in Nicosia, Cyprus, and William Tuohy in London also contributed to this article.

THE STRUGGLE FOR A KURDISH STATE

A chronology of the Kurds’ struggle for autonomy this century: POST-WORLD WAR I--Treaty of Sevres, which liquidates Turkish Ottoman Empire, calls for creation of autonomous Kurdish state. But after Turkish military revival under Kemal Ataturk, new Treaty of Lausanne drops mention of Kurdish autonomy.

1925--Turkey crushes revolt by Kurdish Sunni Muslims in east.

1946--Soviet-backed Kurdish Republic formed in Iran. When Soviets pull out of Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, leaving Kurds to face Iranian army alone, republic falls apart.

1961--Under leadership of Mustafa Barzani, organized armed resistance begins against Iraqi rule of Kurdish areas.

1970--Baath Party, which took over Iraq in 1968, attempts to pacify Kurds with offer of autonomy, which is rejected as being made in bad faith.

1975--Shah of Iran and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein sign Algiers Agreement. In return for Iran’s halting aid to Kurds, Iraq agrees to share sovereignty of Shatt al-Arab waterway.

1988--Hussein avenges Kurdish backing of Iran in 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, waging brutal scorched-earth campaign and using poison gas. Up to 100,000 Kurds forcibly resettled in southern desert.

1991--U.S.-led war against Iraq encourages Kurds to rise again against Hussein. Revolt is crushed, and Kurds flee to mountains.