Kurds, Iraq Begin Peace Negotiations : Mideast: Surprise development comes at the initiative of the Baghdad regime, rebel leaders say. They are skeptical of a promise of greater autonomy.

A high-level Kurdish delegation has begun face-to-face political talks in Baghdad with the Saddam Hussein regime on an end to the rebellion in Iraq, Kurdish officials disclosed Saturday.

The surprise development came at the initiative of the beleaguered Baghdad regime, the Kurdish officials said, and marked another rapid turn in the post-Gulf War situation in Iraq, from armed rebellion to a desperate flight of refugees and, now, attempts for a political solution.

Reports from London, Damascus and Kurdish sources in Iraq said that Jalal Talabani, the Syrian-based leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, headed the delegation, which represented all the major Kurdish political groups.

Preliminary discussions began with low-level Iraqi officials, said a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party, the major organization of Iraq’s estimated 4 million Kurds. He told the British Broadcasting Corp. that talks would continue at a higher level, with Talabani meeting either Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz or Hussein himself.

Two days ago, Talabani, a lawyer who has lived in exile for eight years, was with Kurdish guerrillas holding out in the mountains around the recaptured northeastern city of Sulaymaniyah. Saturday, he was reported to be in Baghdad, awaiting talks with the man he has accused of genocide.

“They (Talabani’s delegation) are discussing an Iraqi offer for expanded autonomy within the federated structure of Iraq, promising democracy, pluralism and constitutional rule in Baghdad,” said Barham Saleh, a London-based spokesman for the Patriotic Union. He said the rebel leaders were skeptical of Hussein’s promises but were impelled to enter discussions because of the plight of Kurdish refugees, as many as 1.5 million men, women and children who fled Baghdad’s army into the cold and snowy mountains of the Turkish and Iranian borders.

“This has to be put in context of the human tragedy unfolding now,” Saleh said. “We are trying to minimize the impact of that tragedy even if it means talking to Saddam Hussein. We will leave no stone unturned to salvage the situation. . . . We are reasonable people. We are doing this for the sake of our dying babies.”

There was no immediate comment from the U.S., British and French governments, which last week made a unified commitment to set up relief camps for Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq under the military protection of the Western powers. The American general heading the operation met Friday with Iraqi officers just across the border from Turkey to warn Hussein’s troops to clear out of the area and not interfere with the camps.

Kurdish spokesmen said Saturday that they expect the Western powers to support their bid for political commitments from Hussein. Remarked Sherwan Bizayee, a London official of the Kurdish Democratic Party: “We are going to suggest to them (the Baghdad government) that any agreement has to be backed up with guarantees from the international community, preferably the United Nations.” Added another KDP official in Damascus of the proposed U.N. guarantees: “We insist on that.”

Bizayee identified the other members of Talabani’s umbrella delegation as Sami Abdel Rahman of the People’s Democratic Party, Rasoul Mamand of the Socialist Party of Kurdistan, and Nechirvan Barzani, the nephew of Masoud Barzani, leader of the KDP, which fields the largest number of Kurdish guerrillas. Talabani previously had not been to Baghdad since 1984.

Alex Efty, an Associated Press reporter with the Kurdish forces outside the city of Sulaymaniyah near the Iranian border, quoted a Kurdish source as saying that Hussein, in seeking the Baghdad talks, had said he was prepared “to discuss everything with the Kurdish side except secession.”

At this point, none of the Kurdish leaders has advocated secession, which Washington and other Western powers oppose as well, fearing a breakup of the Iraqi state that could cause even greater instability in the region. The allies backing the relief camps for Kurds in the north have made clear they will not support the rebellion, and some Kurdish leaders apparently believe they can gain most by striking a political deal now with Hussein while his power is weak from war and insurgency.

The Associated Press report also quoted an unidentified Kurdish source inside Iraq as saying the delegation had received assurances of political guarantees on any deal from some members of the U.N. Security Council before embarking on the Baghdad talks. There has been no confirmation of the report.

Baghdad has denounced Western efforts to help the Kurds on Iraqi soil as unacceptable interference in Iraq’s internal affairs but reportedly has informed Western capitals that it will not resist. But acceptance of Western guarantees on political rights for Iraqi citizens goes beyond the humanitarian sphere.

Bizayee said the Kurds want Baghdad to implement an agreement to provide them full autonomy in the north, a deal struck in 1970 before Hussein came to power. Talabani, whose Patriotic Union broke away from Masoud Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party in the early 1980s, has talked of a federated Iraq, with Kurdish rule in the north and Shiite Muslim control in the south. Hussein’s proposals have gone no further than limited autonomy, generally in cultural areas such as education.

After his troops were crushed by the allied offensive in Kuwait and southern Iraq in the last week of February, the Iraqi strongman told a nationwide television and radio audience that he would deliver multi-party democracy to Iraq, which for more than two decades has been under his autocratic rule as president and boss of the ruthless security forces. The Iraqi leader had promised moves toward democratic government in the spring of 1989 as well, but the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party moved glacially toward enacting a promised new constitution. In naming a new Cabinet last month, Hussein made similar pledges, but the reshuffle has been termed largely cosmetic and meaningless by Middle East specialists.

Meanwhile, press reports said fighting continued in the country. The official Iranian news agency said that Kurds had beaten back another attempt by the Iraqi army to push them from the heights above Sulaymaniyah. The agency quoted what it said was an informed source as saying that a battalion of Baghdad’s Republican Guard had been wiped out in the fighting.

It also quoted refugees as saying fighting continued in the Shiite-populated southern provinces.