Iraq Opposition Splits as Shiites Denounce Kurd Talks : Insurgency: The two groups had professed unity in attempts to overthrow Hussein. But Baghdad negotiations trigger a bitter schism.

Exiled leaders of Iraq’s embattled Shiite Muslims on Monday denounced the political talks in Baghdad between Kurdish officials and Saddam Hussein’s government, baring a sharp split in the Iraqi opposition.

Kurdish and Shiite officials, meeting in Beirut last month at the height of the Iraqi rebellion, professed unity on a goal of replacing Hussein’s dictatorial regime with a democratically elected government. But the collapse of the twin insurgencies has broken the appearance of a common bond.

The Shiite exile spokesmen Monday sounded angry and dismayed. “We can never think of holding talks with a regime which massacres the people so barbarically,” declared a statement released in Damascus by the Tehran-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

In other developments:

* French and British troops moved into northern Iraq to join U.S. Marines building refugee camps for hundreds of thousands of Kurds, and Britain announced that it will double the number of relief flights for Kurdish refugees in western Iran, wire services reported.

* Japan decided to send a flotilla of navy minesweepers to help multinational efforts to clear the Persian Gulf of Iraqi-laid mines, Reuters news agency quoted a spokesman for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party as saying in Tokyo. The mission, which would be Japan’s first military deployment abroad since World War II, will be announced Wednesday, the spokesman said.

* Two American soldiers were injured by a land mine at a Kurdish refugee camp on the Turkish-Iraqi border, U.S. military officials said. They were the first such injuries reported among the 8,000 or so U.S. troops helping the Kurds on the border. The soldiers’ names were not immediately released.

Kurdish officials disclosed Saturday that a four-man delegation headed by Jalal Talabani, a lawyer and veteran of the guerrilla wars against Hussein, had gone to Baghdad for talks on expanded autonomy for the Kurdish-populated northern provinces. Hussein’s government has not confirmed that the talks are taking place, but sources in Amman and Kurdish spokesmen in Damascus and London insist that initial negotiations are under way in the Iraqi capital.

The Shiite insurgents, who report that brush-fire clashes continue against the Iraqi army around the southern city of Basra, have rejected any political deals with Hussein, whose regime, reeling from its disastrous defeat in Kuwait, was hard-pressed to contain the insurgencies last month. “The overthrow of Saddam’s hated regime is certainly the primary goal of all Iraqi people,” insisted the Shiite council’s statement.

Added Taki Mudarresi, another Shiite exile leader in Damascus: “There should be no bargaining with executioner Saddam. . . . He is a war criminal who deserves the fate of all killers in history.”

In London, Kurdish officials said no details of the Baghdad talks have emerged, but the Times of London quoted unidentified Kurdish sources as saying Hussein, who initiated the meeting, appeared prepared to make autonomy concessions to the 4 million Iraqi Kurds in hopes of persuading the United Nations to lift its economic embargo against Iraq.

The Times’ report, quoting its sources, claimed that the 54-year-old president was considering sweetening a deal by permitting the oil city of Kirkuk to be included in an autonomous Kurdish region. The loss of Kirkuk precipitated a rapid collapse of the insurgency and a flood of Kurdish refugees to the Turkish and Iranian borders.

The Iraqi leader has made no similar offers of autonomy to the Shiites, who constitute a majority of the Iraqi population. Instead, Baghdad officials have charged that the rebellion in the south was fomented by neighboring Iran, and relations between the two capitals, which warmed during the Persian Gulf War, have soured again.

The Kurds were granted limited autonomy in 1974. But real power remained firmly in Baghdad’s hands, and Hussein brutally suppressed Iraqi Kurds who sided with Iran during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

It is not known specifically what Talabani is asking, but he has little political clout except the international support for the Kurds engendered by the tragedy of the refugee situation. The Damascus-based exile leader crossed into Iraq during the rebellion, setting up a temporary headquarters in the border town of Zakhu, then reportedly moving with guerrilla holdouts to the mountains outside the city of Sulaymaniyah near the Iranian frontier.

In disclosing the talks on Saturday, Barham Saleh, a London-based spokesman for Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said the delegation was “discussing an Iraqi offer for expanded autonomy within the federated structure of Iraq, promising democracy, pluralism and constitutional rule in Baghdad.”

“Talabani went down on Saturday at Saddam Hussein’s request,” a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party, the largest rebel organization, said Monday in London. “The talks continued Sunday. There is no evidence of a conclusion. The last we heard, they were still there.

“Because of the bitter experiences of the past,” he said, few Kurds or their leaders have any trust in Hussein’s words, but Talabani apparently decided that the invitation was worth exploring. “Whether this (the talks and Baghdad’s recent pledges of democracy) was all cosmetic to win support (abroad) we don’t know yet,” the KDP official admitted. “We will know better when the discussions are over.”

Saleh, the Patriotic Union spokesman, said Talabani and his delegation, which represents the major Kurdish political and guerrilla organizations, were prompted to accept the offer of talks because of the refugee disaster. “This has to be put in the context of the human tragedy unfolding now,” he said. “We are trying to minimize the impact of that tragedy even if it means talking to Saddam Hussein.”