Allies Order Iraqi Forces Away From Kurds’ Camps

The United States, Britain and France have ordered Saddam Hussein’s government to remove its security forces from the area near a new Kurdish refugee camp in northern Iraq, the White House said Thursday, and there were indications that Baghdad will comply swiftly.

“We would expect them to be out by early this weekend,” White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said. About 200 to 300 Iraqis, described as soldiers, police officers and internal security officials, had taken up posts in the nearby town of Zakhu as U.S. troops began building the refugee camp.

Thomas R. Pickering, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, delivered the demand to his Iraqi counterpart, Abdul Amir Anbari, Wednesday evening. The Iraqi ambassador replied that the soldiers had been withdrawn and that only 50 police officers will remain, a U.S. official said. Other officials suggested that the risk of conflict was being defused.

President Bush said the reports of an Iraqi withdrawal were “encouraging.”

“It’s a very good development,” he said.

The order was portrayed at the White House as a preventive measure but one that was necessary to coax reluctant refugees clinging to rudimentary camps in Turkey to return to Iraq. But although it reflected an effort to establish a measure of stability in the unsettled region, it also raised the risk that the 1,300 U.S. troops deployed in Iraq would find themselves in conflict with Iraqi units.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney warned that the U.S. troops will use force, if necessary, to ensure that Iraqi military and internal security forces remain at least “several kilometers” from Kurdish refugee camps established by U.S. troops. And he added that more troops may be deployed to Turkey and northern Iraq.

In other developments:

- The Iraqi government confirmed the disclosure of Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani that the Kurds and Hussein’s regime have reached agreement in principle to provide some sort of autonomy for the Kurdish provinces in the north.

- The White House announced that a second refugee enclave, protected by U.S. troops and other coalition forces, is being established west of Zakhu and nine miles east of Amadiyah and that a 24-hour military coordination center was being established in Zakhu.

- The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iraq’s denial that it has nuclear weapons is inadequate, and it gave Baghdad until today to disclose the location of any weapons-grade nuclear material.

- The United States said a U.S. airplane will deliver blankets to Iran on Saturday in the first such public contact between the United States and Iran in more than a decade. Hundreds of thousands of the approximately 1 million Kurdish and Iraqi Shiite Muslim refugees who fled into Iran are reported to be desperate, and Iran has sought international assistance.

- Bush sought congressional approval to spend $150 million on humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts. The money will be offset by interest earned on money set aside for the Persian Gulf War, Fitzwater said.

The establishment of the camps in northern Iraq--and the need to provide food, shelter and security for the refugees--has been a troubling issue for the Administration, and one that Bush initially tried to avoid. But the desperate plight of the Kurds, seeking refuge from Hussein’s forces in the wake of the unsuccessful uprising after Iraq’s defeat in the Gulf War, spurred Bush to authorize deployment of U.S. troops to provide protection.

U.S. officials now fear they may be on a path that will lead to the creation of seething camps of stateless people akin to those housing Palestinians in Lebanon.

“I’d like to say we have a full solution at the moment. But we don’t. We are searching urgently for answers,” said one senior White House official. “I can’t tell you at the moment we won’t end up with something like the Palestinian refugee camps. But we won’t turn these people over to the tender mercies of Saddam Hussein.”

U.S. Deployment

Defense Secretary Cheney said at a news conference that the United States “may well be deploying additional forces” to Turkey and northern Iraq, where 7,000 U.S. military personnel have landed. Of that total, about 1,300 are said by the White House to be deployed in Iraq.

“We’ve made it very clear that we do not want Iraqi forces in a position where they interfere with our efforts to undertake the relief efforts,” Cheney said. “We have given them a deadline, and our people have the authority to use the force necessary” to separate Iraqi forces from nervous Kurds.

Administration officials have been reluctant to set a time limit on the deployment.

“The sooner we can complete our mission, which is to build the camps and get the Kurds moved into the camps and get their assistance flowing, and then get out of there, the better I’m going to feel about it,” said Cheney. “I am not eager to see U.S. military forces tied up in this kind of effort indefinitely.”

Asked whether American troops could remain in northern Iraq for another one to two years, Cheney said, “I certainly would hope not.”

Fitzwater said U.S. forces near Zakhu have not encountered any problems with the Iraqi units. But he explained that the Iraqis’ departure is necessary to persuade the refugees that they will be safe if they leave their mountain encampments on the Iraqi-Turkish frontier for the camps to the south.

The Iraqis’ presence, Fitzwater said, is “intimidating.”

“It only heightens the possibility of confrontation or some kind of problem to have these people in Zakhu or in the surrounding region,” he said.

However, the White House projected none of the tough tenor that marked its prewar approach to Iraq.

“What we’re trying to do is get it done rather than beat our chests and show how tough we are,” a senior White House official said.

Similarly, in a meeting at the United Nations, there were no indications that Iraq would balk at meeting the demand.

Anbari, the Iraqi ambassador, informed Pickering that Iraqi military officers had told American officers in northern Iraq that all Iraqi soldiers will be withdrawn, a U.S. official said, although the 50 police officers will remain. The discussions in northern Iraq were not held in person but through military communications channels; the military coordination center being set up in Zakhu will allow for regular meetings with Iraqi military representatives.

Speaking with reporters in a corridor at the United Nations, Anbari said the presence of the police officers had been arranged “to the satisfaction of both sides” and that all the soldiers had withdrawn by noon Thursday, EDT.

Kurdish Autonomy

In Baghdad on Thursday, Iraqi Prime Minister Sadoun Hammadi confirmed the disclosure of Kurdish leader Talabani that agreement in principle has been reached to provide a kind of autonomy for the Kurdish region in the north.

But he repeated Iraqi objections to the havens being established by U.S. and other allied troops for Kurdish refugees along the Turkish border.

“We believe that (neither) the United States nor any other country has a right to do such a thing,” Hammadi told a news conference in the Iraqi capital, denouncing the camps as interference in Iraq’s internal affairs. He spoke before Ambassador Anbari’s comments at the United Nations that Iraq was pulling its security forces out of Zakhu.

President Hussein has called on Iraqi Kurds to return to their homes despite the brutal counteroffensive that crushed the Kurdish rebellion last month. Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, issued the same call to his people Wednesday.

After meeting with Hussein, Talabani declared that agreement has been reached to end the insurgency in return for autonomy for Iraq’s 3.5 million Kurds, nearly half of whom have sought sanctuary across the Turkish and Iranian frontiers.

Hammadi declared that the Baghdad regime is “ready to move toward reforms,” including Kurdish autonomy. He added that the development of a democratic system in Iraq might not meet Western expectations, saying perceptions of democracy “may differ from one place to another.”

On Thursday, exiled leaders of Iraqi Shiite Muslims denounced the reported autonomy agreement. A leading organization, the Tehran-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said the accord will torpedo the professed alliance between Shiites and Kurds to build democracy in the country.

The Shiites’ political sponsor, Iran, took a softer line. Said Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati: “We are for the legitimate demands of the Iraqi people and welcome any agreement which respects human rights and the rights of minorities in Iraq, including Kurds and Shiites.”

The U.S. View

U.S. analysts are skeptical that the tentative agreement between Kurdish leaders and Hussein will rapidly end the refugee problem.

“The bulk of the Kurds will support” an agreement if it is signed by both of the two main Kurdish leaders, Talabani and Masoud Barzani, one government expert on Iraq said. “But will they come off the mountainside? I don’t know.”

The Kurdish leaders are “negotiating from a position of weakness,” the official added, feeling “tremendous pressure from the tens of thousands of refugees” to find a quick solution to their plight before international attention shifts from their problems to whatever the next international crisis turns out to be.

At the same time, however, the Kurds are deeply suspicious of Hussein, having been brutally attacked by his army twice in the last three years.

Because of these fears, the official added, the Kurds have every incentive “to try to drag us in” to the very scenario that Bush and his aides have been trying to avoid--a long-term involvement in Iraq’s internal affairs.

Major Players

Kurdish leader Talabani’s announcement Wednesday carried substantial weight throughout the region. Although not all Kurds are members of his party, he speaks with authority, having been a leading Kurdish politician for nearly three decades.

Operating in exile in Damascus since the early 1980s, Talabani is the Mr. Outside of the Iraqi Kurds, a political contrast to Masoud Barzani--Mr. Inside--the son of the late Mustafa Barzani, the Kurds’ longtime warlord in their struggle for autonomy.

Talabani, a lawyer, has carried the Kurdish cause to government offices in Washington and London, while Barzani remained in the mountainous north with his Kurdish guerrillas, who have fought for autonomy against this and previous Iraqi regimes.

Barzani commands a force of 30,000 or more organized fighters, backed by a generally militant mountain populace, a tribal society in which almost all men carry arms.

The two Kurdish leaders have differed on politics. Talabani broke with Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party in 1975 to form the vaguely leftist PUK, which draws its support from the urbanized Kurdish population in the cities of the north. But analysts say Kurds support both men, who are co-chairmen of the umbrella Iraqi Kurdistan Front.

A number of smaller Kurdish parties are also aligned with the Kurdistan Front. And President Hussein has drawn some Kurdish followers to his Baathist-led front in Baghdad.

The negotiations in Baghdad, Talabani said Wednesday, center on an autonomy plan put forward by the Arab Baath Socialist Party in 1970, giving the Kurds control over internal matters in their region but leaving defense and foreign affairs in the hands of Baghdad. The plan was never fully implemented although Hussein set up an ostensibly autonomous region, including a local assembly. The administration, however, has taken its orders from Baghdad.

Aid to Iran

Saturday’s scheduled flight of relief supplies to Mehrabad Airport in Tehran will mark a symbolic turn in the stormy U.S. relationship with Iran. U.S. and Iranian diplomatic ties have been broken since the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November, 1979.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the only flight of U.S. aircraft to Tehran since then occurred in May, 1986, when Robert C. McFarlane, President Ronald Reagan’s former national security adviser, made a then-secret visit in an effort to free U.S. hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.

BACKGROUND

Kurdish leaders also reached autonomy agreements with Iraq in 1966, 1970 and 1985. Each collapsed in bloodshed. The Kurds are a nation of 20 million with their own language and culture--but no state. Iraq enacted a Kurdish autonomy law in the 1970s, and the law still remains nominally in effect, although local Kurdish leaders have acted as agents for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The rebels resumed large-scale fighting during the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran War, aided by Iran. Hussein crushed that revolt as the war with Iran ended.

Times staff writers Nick B. Williams Jr. in Amman, Jordan, and Stanley Meisler, David Lauter and Melissa Healy, in Washington, contributed to this report.

WHAT KURDISH AUTONOMY MEANS

The talks between Kurdish rebel leaders and Iraqi officials are based on a 1970 agreement which was only partly implemented. A summary: 1. Kurdish is an official language in Kurdish areas and the language of instruction in Kurdish schools. 2. The government pledges to eliminate discrimination against Kurds in Cabinet ministries, public offices, the army and other posts. 3. The government plans special Kurdish affairs programs on television and will build more and better schools in Kurdish areas. 4. Kurdish areas will be administered by Kurds, including police. 5. Kurds can establish youth, women’s and teachers’ organizations. 6. Kurds who left government employ during the rebellion will be rehired. 7. Resources will be fairly distributed, with indemnities for past afflictions. 8. Kurdish and Arab villagers will be returned to their homes. 9. Land reform will be speeded in Kurdish areas. 10. The constitution will recognize the Kurdish nationality and language. 11. Kurds will surrender their broadcasting station and heavy arms. 12. One national vice president will be a Kurd. 13. Kurdish provinces will be governed in line with the agreement. 14. A census will determine where there is a Kurdish majority. 15. Kurds will have proportional representation in Parliament. Source: Associated Press