U.S. to Protect Camps, General Warns Baghdad

The United States and its allies will build and protect huge refugee settlements in northern Iraq despite Baghdad’s objections, an American general warned two Iraqi generals in a tense face-to-face meeting Friday at a battle-scarred border post.

Traveling with a heavy escort of helicopters overhead and battle-ready Marines on the ground, American Lt. Gen. John M. Shalikashvili journeyed a few hundred yards into Iraq for the meeting at the abandoned border post of Habur, across the river from the Turkish town of Silopi.

The 50-minute meeting was described as “frank”--diplomatic shorthand meaning there was disagreement. Shalikashvili, who commands the allied effort to help the Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq, said no more meetings are planned even though many issues remained to be resolved.

Diplomatic sources said earlier this week that two understrength Iraqi divisions were operating around the Iraqi town of Zakhu, where the United States, Britain and France intend to build the camps for up to half a million refugees from Iraq. The settlements will be protected by up to 16,000 troops.

At the meeting, Shalikashvili was understood to have reinforced public American warnings that the U.S. military would accept no Iraqi interference in the allied plans to build and safeguard the camps.

“I believe that’s the key--for this to continue without any harassment,” the three-star American general said. British, French and Canadian officers accompanied him on the short helicopter ride to a border post damaged in fighting between Kurdish insurgents and Iraqi troops last month.

Iraqi Brig. Gens. Nishwan Danoun and Abdul-Haziz Jezail came late and stone-faced to the meeting, arriving in a white Mercedes-Benz; they left without public comment. The government of President Saddam Hussein complains that President Bush’s plan to aid the Kurdish refugees is a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, but Iraqi officials have reportedly assured Washington that their country will not interfere with it.

“It’s our intention to deploy the necessary security forces to protect the humanitarian effort. That was our intention from the beginning, and it is still our intention,” said Shalikashvili, who was a deputy commander of the U.S. Army in Europe until being named to the refugee relief command two days ago.

Shalikashvili said he hopes that military construction teams can enter Iraq to begin laying infrastructure for the camps in the next day or two.

Small units of between 30 and 50 Americans each are already entering northern Iraq to assess the ground and take water and soil samples, military sources said.

There have been no contacts with Iraqi forces in the area, military spokesmen said. Shalikashvili said the United States is determined to avoid inadvertent clashes.

“That danger cannot be excluded, and we will do whatever we can to minimize it. But I don’t think that anyone can guarantee it at this time,” he said.

Bush ordered the massive construction project earlier this week when it became clear that there was no possible way to care for the nearly half a million refugees, most of them Kurds, now perched in a dozen squalid concentrations along the Turkish border with Iraq.

The refugees began fleeing Iraq late last month after Iraqi forces brutally suppressed an insurgency that briefly earned the Kurds control of almost all of northern Iraq. Along with Kurdish-speaking peo ple in nearby nations, the Kurds of Iraq, who have been systematically suppressed under Hussein, seek an independent Kurdistan.

Conditions in the mountain encampments, together with Turkey’s refusal to accept large numbers of refugees, have prompted the decision to construct the camps.

“It is clear to me--and I hope we can make it clear to those displaced people who are up there and need help--that we simply cannot provide adequate help where they are right now,” Shalikashvili said. “There is no end game if they remain where they are.”

Officers traveling with the general said the United States and its allies will try to woo the refugees to the new settlements, showing them television images of the camps under construction as part of a public relations gambit to win their confidence.

On Thursday, Iraq announced that it had signed an agreement with the United Nations to provide international aid not only to the Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq but also to Shiite Muslim refugees in the south. Because it carried Iraq’s approval, there were suggestions that the plan was a direct rival to the allied effort along the Turkish border.

On Friday, the Bush Administration tried to smooth over any differences with the United Nations on the issue, saying it welcomes the U.N.-Iraqi plan for “humanitarian centers” for refugees, the Associated Press reported from Washington.

But presidential Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said the United States still intends to use troops to protect refugees in camps in northern Iraq, at least initially.

And Fitzwater said the Administration does not envision that Thursday’s agreement will mean rival refugee camps--some set up by the allies and others by the United Nations and Iraq.

“It’s the same camps. The U.N. is preparing to take over the camps,” he said.

In interviews, the refugees in northern Iraq say that they are eager to return to Iraq but that many fear Hussein’s revenge. The American goal is to make plain that the camps will be protected for as long as necessary.

Speaking with reporters, Shalikashvili would not speculate on how long a security presence might be necessary.

He said the camps themselves are intended as temporary measures and that the circumstances surrounding them could change following any change of governments in Baghdad.

“It is not a long-term solution. Other mechanisms will have to be found,” he said.

The American goal is to turn over administration of the camps to international and private relief organizations as soon as possible. In the meantime, while the camps are under construction, the United States is mounting a massive airlift to feed and shelter the refugees in the mountain camps.

There are many uncertainties, however, and international relief specialists warn of possible epidemics and large-scale fatalities in the camps.

Shalikashvili acknowledged that although the American planning is advancing, there are still many uncertainties.

“Right now, few of us know the magnitude of the problem,” he said. American military pilots flying over northern Iraq on Friday reported seeing refugees moving toward the Zakhu area, apparently in anticipation of the camps there.

By most estimates, nearly half of Iraq’s 4 million Kurds are on the move. In addition to the 400,000 or so sheltering miserably along the Turkish border, about 1 million have entered Iran.

The United States has offered to fly relief supplies to Iran, but the camps being planned in Iraq are only for those refugees in the Turkish area, U.S. officials say.

IRAQI EXODUS

The State Department estimates there are more than 2 million Iraqi refugees. A breakdown: KURDS

In Turkey 400,000

On Iraq-Turkey border 400,000

In Iran 1 million

On Iraq-Iran border 500,000

IRAQI SHIITES

In Iran 100,000

On Iraq-Kuwait border 30,000

KURDISH RELIEF

Here are some of the relief agencies in the United States taking donations for Kurdish refugees:

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Open Mailbox for Kurdish Refugees, 711 Third Ave., 10th floor, New York, N.Y., 10017. (212) 687-6200

AmeriCares, 161 Cherry St., New Canaan, Conn., 06840. 1-800-486-HELP

CARE, Mideast Relief Fund, 660 First Ave., New York, N.Y., 10016. 1-800-521-CARE

Catholic Relief Services, P.O. Box 17220, Baltimore, Md., 21297-0304. Attn: Persian Gulf Fund. 1-800-SEND-HOPE

Christian Children’s Fund, 203 E. Cary St., Richmond, Va., 23219. 1-800-441-1000

Direct Relief International, P.O. Box 30820, Santa Barbara, Calif., 93130

Food for the Hungry, 7729 E. Greenway Rd., Scottsdale, Ariz., 85260. 1-800-2-HUNGER

Oxfam America, 115 Broadway, Boston, Mass., 02116. (617) 482-1211

Presiding Bishop’s Fund for World Relief, 815 Second Ave., New York, N.Y., 10017. (212) 922-5144

Save the Children, Middle East Relief Fund, Box 975, Westport, Conn., 06881. (203) 221-4000

The U.S. Committee for UNICEF, Middle East Fund, 333 E. 38th St., New York, N.Y., 10016

World Concern, P.O. Box 33000, Seattle, Wash., 98133

Source: Associated Press