Germany Will Triple Aid to Kurdish Refugees : Persian Gulf: Bonn will also send 40 helicopters to distribute supplies.

Germany will nearly triple its financial aid to Kurdish refugees in Iran and Turkey and will send a total of 40 military helicopters to the two countries to distribute life-saving supplies among the Kurds, it was announced Tuesday.

The German government said its Iranian-Turkish aid will be increased to $165 million from about $58 million and that an advance team has left for Iran to implement the massive German operation, which will include the airlifting of medicine, blankets, tents and food to border areas in the two countries.

Daily flights will move supplies to Iran and Turkey, where 20 military copters in each country will shift the supplies from the airports to refugee camps, many high in the mountains.

In other developments:

* President Bush announced that the United States will build special encampments in northern Iraq for fleeing Kurds and provide a military force to protect them from Saddam Hussein’s army.

* The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees returned from a trip to camps for Iraqi refugees on the Iranian border and called for massive international aid to avert tragedy. “A human tragedy is unfolding right in front of us,” Commissioner Sadako Ogata said in Tehran. “Massive mobilization of resources is needed to avert it.”

* Israel shipped to Turkey 10 tons of aid for the Kurds stranded on the Iraqi-Turkish border. The supplies, including tents, blankets, clothing, shoes, diapers and medicine, were turned over to the Turkish Red Crescent in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, according to Israel’s legation in Ankara.

In Iran

The Iranian Foreign Ministry said a brigade-sized Iraqi military force pulled out of Iran on Tuesday after penetrating two miles into Iranian territory Sunday, attacking refugees and killing an unspecified number of them.

The Iran-Iraq border, which had been closed as a result of the Iraqi incursion, was reopened late Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry said.

In other aid developments, a European Community official said Tuesday that the EC has set up 25 relief flights to Iran in the next few days and allocated $25 million for the Kurds.

Juan Prat, the EC’s director of North-South relations, said during a visit to Tehran: “The problem in Turkey is huge, but it is clear there are going to be many more refugees here than in Turkey.”

A Paris source said France has sent seven planes to Tabriz, capital of Iran’s Azerbaijan region, and bought 180 tons of supplies, which were trucked to two sites near the border.

In Turkey

Bush’s announcement followed an appeal by Turkish President Turgut Ozal for the world to rescue 1.5 million Iraqi refugees trapped along the frontiers with Turkey and Iran by building emergency camps for them in northern Iraq.

Ozal’s nationally televised appeal offered the first sign of an international political response to the swelling refugee crisis, borne out later by Bush’s speech.

With weakening refugees jammed in misery and peril along remote border areas with Turkey and Iran, there is growing recognition among experts struggling to help them that belated aid--even when it finally begins to flow smoothly--can only be a Band-Aid.

Relief experts, diplomats and Turkish officials stressed in interviews Tuesday that until Saddam Hussein leaves power in Iraq, there can be no real solution to the Kurdish problem.

“What we are trying to do is to keep people alive until there is a better answer. The situation is insupportable for very long,” said one ranking American official.

Citing the “extraordinary difficulties” in dealing with 500,000 mountain-bound refugees on the Turkish border and the 1 million in Iran, Ozal said land has been identified inside Iraq on which camps could be built.

“Even the best organization cannot cope with such an influx in one week. There is very little place for people to settle in these high mountains,” he said.

Relief experts warn of accelerating deaths among refugees in a dozen concentrations in the mountains without good water, sanitation, shelter, medical care or assured food supply.

Wind and cloud cover interrupted the U.S.-led airdrop of supplies to the refugees Tuesday and kept helicopters on the ground.

At Silopi, the vanguard of an estimated 8,000 noncombat American troops constructed a large resupply base. Once other bases are established, a fleet of 73 American helicopters, supported by British, French and German choppers, will ferry up to 600 tons of supplies a day to the refugees.

Until this week, Turkey had refused to allow the Kurdish multitude along its ill-defined mountain border into its territory. Turkey, which has 12 million Kurds of its own, cites security concerns and is skeptical of the long-range commitment for international aid.

Under pressure from Western allies and international relief agencies, Ozal is now allowing up to 40,000 refugees to move into an existing camp not far from the border.

Britain has been urging the construction of camps on both the Turkish and Iraqi sides of the border in areas that would be declared havens for refugees under international guarantee.

Tuohy reported from Tehran and Montalbano from Ankara.