U.S. Will Speed Relocation of Kurds to Avoid Diseases

Faced with the mounting threat of hot-weather diseases such as cholera in refugee camps along the Turkish-Iraqi border, U.S. forces plan to use truck convoys to start shifting refugees more quickly down to the allied-protected haven in northern Iraq, U.S. military spokesmen said Monday.

U.S. Marines kept up their psychological pressure on Iraqi troops in the northern Iraqi provincial capital of Dahuk, a major city from which many of the refugees fled. If the allies can make Dahuk a secure city, the reasoning goes, more refugees may be tempted to return.

Witnesses said a steady stream of Iraqi soldiers was already choosing to leave the virtually deserted city on trucks loaded with looted furniture and electrical goods.

“We understand Iraqi forces are leaving Dahuk,” U.S. Army Col. Bob Flocke told reporters in Silopi, Turkey. But allied troops kept to the outskirts of the city.

“Dahuk is off-limits, and there is no decision yet on extending the security zone there,” said Capt. Ron Hahn, a spokesman at allied headquarters in Incirlik, Turkey.

In other developments:

* Allied troops expanded the northern Iraqi security zone once again Monday, extending it 30 miles eastward toward the Iranian border when French, British, U.S. and Italian airborne troops landed in the town of Suriya, the Associated Press quoted U.S. officers as saying in the Iraqi town of Zakhu. The security zone is now 120 miles wide and 30 miles deep.

* Iraq lifted censorship rules imposed on foreign journalists at the start of the war, telling them that they no longer need to submit their stories for security clearance.

* Kurdish leaders arrived in Baghdad to resume talks begun last month on their demands for an autonomous region in northern Iraq. Kurdish leaders announced tentative agreement with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on the question of autonomy.

* Opponents of the Hussein regime gathered in Paris to demand his ouster. A news conference was attended by Muslim fundamentalists, Communists and dissidents from Iraq’s ruling party. But no Kurdish spokesmen were present.

Alliance officers on the Iraqi-Turkish border said convoys of rented Iraqi trucks will join military vehicles Wednesday to speed up the transfer of refugees down from a dozen squalid camps along the 200-mile border with Turkey.

The alliance has set itself a June 1 target to clear several hundred thousand mainly Kurdish refugees from camps on the Turkish border before high mountain streams dry up and diseases spread.

Cholera has struck the Cukurca camp on the Turkish border, and the Paris-based group Doctors Without Borders said seven people have died so far.