No Permanent Zone Seen for Kurds, Bush Reiterates

With U.S. and allied forces expanding their haven for refugees in northern Iraq, President Bush reiterated Saturday that the United States is not setting up a permanent security zone in Iraq for the Kurds.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s troops have now been barred from a border zone 80 miles long and 36 miles deep, as U.S., British and French troops clear the Iraqis out of a widening zone across the northern portion of the war-torn country.

The refugee zone encompasses many towns and villages from which the Kurds had fled Hussein’s army as well as tent camps erected by allied troops to entice the refugees down from squalid mountain camps along the Iraqi-Turkish frontier.

Asked whether the United States is trying to establish a permanent zone for the Kurds, Bush said: “I wouldn’t phrase it that way. I’ve always said that we were not interested in a dismembered or fractionated Iraq. That’s not our--I made that so very clear from the very beginning that there shouldn’t be any questions about that one.

“Certainly we want (the Kurds’) lives protected against this violence that’s been wrought upon them for many, many years,” he said. “It’s been going on for years, and it’s terrible.”

In Iraq, meanwhile, three U.S. soldiers helping a humanitarian cause were maimed by a legacy of war when they accidentally triggered an American anti-personnel bomblet near the dusty village of Amadiyah, which marks the farthest extension of the allied refugee haven in the northern part of the country.

An American officer who was present said the accident occurred while Navy Seabees worked to repair an abandoned Iraqi military airport at nearby Sirsenk, which serves both Amadiyah and a nearby hilltop summer palace belonging to Hussein.

American bombs that damaged the runway and forced the Iraqi air force to abandon the airport during the Persian Gulf War simultaneously sowed anti-personnel bomblets designed to harass repair crews. The bomblets, which one American captain said “are scattered about everywhere and dangerous as hell,” worked with tragic effect Saturday.

One American soldier lost his lower left leg and right foot and suffered a severe eye injury. The other two suffered shrapnel wounds of the arms, legs and abdomen, according to doctors at a Canadian field hospital where they were flown by helicopter.

The accident occurred as British marines of the Scotland-based 4/5 Commando, who are leading the eastward expansion of the haven, reinforced their control of Amadiyah. Relief officials are deciding whether to build a tent camp near the village for some of the estimated half a million mostly Kurdish refugees now spilling back into Iraq after a miserable month in mountain camps along the Turkish border.

The village, which has a normal population of around 6,000, emptied as part of the panicked flight from northern Iraq after the collapse of a Kurdish rebellion against Hussein in March.

The arrival of the British, though, is having the same impact around Amadiyah as the presence of American troops has had farther west in a sanctuary zone of about 1,500 square miles where no Iraqi military presence is allowed.

“As to our presence here--the jungle drums beat extremely quickly,” said Col. Jonathan Thomson, who commands the British marines as well as attached units of Dutch marines and red-bereted French paratroopers, who form the allied spearhead from positions about 6 miles east of Amadiyah.

“We’re all amateurs at this, but it’s a bit like watering the garden--things grow,” said Thomson at his headquarters in a school. “First the (Kurdish) men come to see, and then they go back to the camps. Then, in a day or two, the families begin coming back home.”

Recognizing that refugees could not long survive in inhospitable mountain perches--more than 100 cholera cases are reported in one camp--the allies decided last month to create and secure the protected zone over Iraqi objections. Refugees say the foreign military presence is decisive in their decision to return to homes they fled fearing Hussein’s wrath.

“The program is working very well. People are clapping soldiers on the back,” said Thomson. There is other good news: The United Nations begins food distribution at the Amadiyah firehouse today.

“The Americans must never go but always stay,” said one newly returned refugee who called himself Maiya.

In addition to the estimated 500,000 refugees who went to the rapidly emptying Turkish border camps, more than a million others journeyed to Iran. U.S. planning has not focused on them, but a spring afternoon’s visit to Amadiyah made clear that the drums are beating in Iran as well.

“We heard in Iran about the Americans. Now, my entire family is coming back,” said a young Kurd named Messa, who said he had fled with an extended family of 75 people from the Amadiyah area.

Amadiyah is 55 hard mountain miles by road from the Turkish border and about 45 miles from the first protected-zone camp at Zakhu, now a tent city where, officials say, a sense of community is beginning to emerge from a collection of over 2,000 refugees. The allies hope most refugees will return directly to their homes, but they offer the Zakhu camp for the nervous and for those who live in areas outside the haven.

The road to Amadiyah is scarred by American bombs. One river is crossed by a new Iraqi army bridge replacing the one downed in American attacks.

The countryside is green, fertile and empty: no farmers, no livestock. Its signposts are burned-out trucks, shot-up buses, crashed and cannibalized cars and the pathetic ruins of villages destroyed by Hussein in the course of a decade-long war against the Kurds.

Armed Kurdish Peshmerga guerrillas, who still control parts of northeastern Iraq, stare at sparse civilian traffic and the armored patrol cars of American military police and Dutch marines.

As allied troops have extended the secure area deeper into northern Iraq, Bush has faced increasing questions about the length of time American soldiers and Marines will be stationed there and about their ultimate mission.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney on Monday committed himself to the troops’ withdrawal “as soon as possible,” saying: “As soon as we are confident that we can withdraw our forces from there, it is our urgent desire to do so.”

The President, speaking with reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One as he flew from Washington to Michigan to speak at the University of Michigan, said that he was pleased with the U.S. relief efforts, and added:

“America has done what it always does--stand up and try to help people. The operation is superb. I just hope that there will be a peaceful resolution so they can all go back to their homes, which is what they want to do.”

Gerstenzang reported from Ann Arbor and Montalbano reported from Amadiyah.