White House Backs Kurds in Talks With Iraq

A senior State Department official met Monday with representatives of Iraqi Kurds as the Bush Administration voiced support for their negotiations with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“Anything that would allow them to return to their homes in safety would be a welcome move,” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said when asked about the negotiations.

Bush advisers concede that such negotiations could strengthen Hussein by quieting his most powerful internal rebellion. But they increasingly appear willing to accept that outcome as perhaps the only way that the United States will be able to disentangle itself from Iraqi affairs.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Iranian diplomats continued indirect talks on American aid to Kurdish refugees amid signs that the two sides may be making progress toward a rare exercise in cooperation.

A U.S. plan to aid refugees along the Iran-Iraq border could be ready as early as today, an Administration official said. The behind-the-scenes talks between the United States and Iran, carried out through Swiss diplomats acting as intermediaries, have been carefully watched for signs that the two countries may be slowly ending their enmity, which began with the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolution in Iran and the subsequent takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Cooperation between the two countries on refugee issues might also improve the climate for the release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon by radical Islamic groups with ties to Iran.

Administration officials said that at least 400,000 refugees have fled Iraq into Turkey, and that as many as 1 million may have fled into Iran. In the Turkish border regions, refugees are dying at a rate estimated at between 60 and more than 500 a day, a State Department spokesman said.

As international attention continued to focus on the Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq, Fitzwater conceded that U.S. troops still in southern Iraq--some 4,000 at this point--will have to stay there “for weeks” to handle the remaining refugees there.

And, although the vast majority of the troops have pulled out, the need for some U.S. troops to remain in southern Iraq longer than promised underlines the dilemma officials now face.

On the one hand, President Bush and his advisers are deeply concerned about U.S. troops being sucked into an open-ended commitment to defend either the Kurds in northern Iraq or the mostly Shiite Muslim refugees in the south.

On the other hand, officials concede that a quieted internal situation that would allow the refugees to return home would also strengthen Hussein. For now, however, Bush and his advisers appear to have decided that Hussein in Baghdad is less of a problem for them than the prospect of having thousands of American troops on Iraqi soil for months to come.