U.S. Moves to Protect Kurds : Iraq: Hussein’s forces are ordered to end all military operations in a wide area where refugees have fled. The northern part of the country is affected.

In a dramatic new attempt to protect beleaguered refugees, the United States has ordered Iraq to end air and ground military operations in a wide swath of northern Iraq where more than a million Kurds have fled to escape annihilation, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

“We do not anticipate a military threat from Iraqi air or ground forces,” White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said. “They have ceased military activities in that area for the last couple of days.”

Although he refused to say how the order would be enforced if Iraq chooses to ignore it, Fitzwater said there is no indication that Saddam Hussein will risk a new confrontation with the U.S.-led coalition that humiliated his army in the war that ended six weeks ago.

Fitzwater declined to specify the geographic area covered by the U.S. warning, but reporters traveling with Secretary of State James A. Baker III in the Middle East were told that Iraq was directed to stop all air activity north of the 36th parallel.

The hotly contested oil city of Kirkuk is about 40 miles south of the line and thus outside the zone, but much of the country’s predominantly Kurdish area, including Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, is inside the protected area.

If Kurdish refugees choose to return to their homes, those living north of the 36th parallel apparently would be safe, while those living south of the line would not.

Fitzwater said that the Iraqis were warned not to interfere with U.S.-backed efforts to provide food, blankets, tents and other supplies to the refugees, who have congregated in camps straddling Iraq’s borders with Turkey and Iran. Although the order does not specifically prohibit attacks against refugees, Fitzwater said that the prohibition against military activity is broad enough to provide indirect protection to civilians within the designated area.

Although the official who spoke to reporters traveling with Baker discussed only air operations, Fitzwater made it clear that the ban also applies to any military action involving tanks, artillery and other ground forces.

“Essentially, the warning was not to operate any military activities that threatened U.N. or coalition forces or anyone else who was helping with humanitarian (programs),” he said. “So that would include both air and ground forces.”

The warning put the United States in a posture of extending an umbrella of protection to the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have been streaming on foot toward the Turkish and Iranian borders. Most of the refugees are Kurds, non-Arab mountain tribesmen who mounted an abortive revolt against Hussein last month.

Baker and President Bush publicly warned Iraq against interfering with relief efforts in the area earlier this week. But it was not until Wednesday that the full scope of the warning, passed to Baghdad through diplomatic channels, was made clear.

After a brief visit to a refugee camp just inside Iraq’s northern border Monday, Baker said that further Iraqi attacks on the refugees could prompt the United Nations Security Council to consider sending a U.N. military force into the area.

U.S. F-16 and F-15 fighter planes are flying combat patrol missions over northern Iraq to protect the American, British and French transport planes that are dropping food and other supplies to refugees. These warplanes would be in position to react to any Iraqi violations of the order.

State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said the airlift has delivered more than 150 tons of supplies inside Iraq since Monday.

U.S. military and civilian agencies have “cleared out” their stockpiles of supplies in Europe and have dispatched 130,000 blankets and 89,000 cases of military field rations to Turkey, she said in a written statement.

The United States also has appealed to more than 45 countries for donations of supplies, she said.

In Washington, Tutwiler’s deputy, Richard Boucher, said that more than $250 million worth of cash and supplies already has been pledged.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh told a government-run newspaper that Iraq itself is distributing bread and baby milk to Kurds and Shiite Muslims returning to their homes in northern and southern Iraq, the Associated Press reported.

The U.S. warning to Iraq was sent during the weekend, before British Prime Minister John Major proposed creation of a Kurdish haven in northern Iraq. Administration officials said Tuesday that the Major plan, which won the support of the 12-nation European Community, is unneeded. At that time, U.S. officials said that creation of a Kurdish enclave might be a step toward the dismemberment of Iraq, something the Administration opposes.

However, it now appears that Washington already had established a de facto haven before Major unveiled his plan.

Fitzwater, however, sought to differentiate the U.S. action from the British proposal.

“What we’re saying is these are areas in which the refugees are located, in areas where we will be,” he said. “And so we don’t consider it an enclave or an artificial kind of location as being designated. But it is in fact where they are located and where we need to be providing the assistance.”

British officials continued to lobby at the United Nations for the Major plan, which they said would facilitate relief efforts. But there seemed to be little enthusiasm for creation of a formal enclave.

As the debate continued over the aftermath of the Gulf War, the president of the Security Council, Paul Noterdaeme of Belgium, said he is ready to notify Iraq that the war itself is officially over. He said the message, declaring that the permanent cease-fire “is . . . now effective,” will be sent if no member objects by 7 a.m. PDT today.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported from Uzumlu, Turkey, that scores of Iraqi refugees are dying every day at a makeshift camp on the Turkish-Iraqi border, with cold and diarrhea devastating people who trekked for days to escape feared reprisals by Hussein’s forces.

In Geneva, the International Red Cross appealed for more funds to help Iranian and Turkish relief agencies cope with the ever-swelling numbers of desperate Iraqi refugees.

Kempster reported from Washington and McManus from Cairo.

THE LINE IN THE NORTH

Iraq has been told to refrain from any military operations north of the 36th parallel, which would reach 90 miles deep inside Iraq along its borders with Turkey and Iran.