U.N. and Iraq Reportedly OK Security Plan

In a tentative first step the Bush Administration hopes will lead to the eventual withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, the United Nations has evidently reached a preliminary agreement with Iraq allowing U.N. security guards to protect humanitarian workers in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, U.S. sources said Tuesday.

But few details about the plan have reached Washington, and there is no guarantee that the security arrangements will persuade the Kurdish refugees that it is safe to return home.

The plan hinges on Iraqi acceptance of the principle that the United Nations may protect its own relief workers and Kurdish acceptance of the idea that the mere presence of these U.N. guards will prevent Iraqi government repression.

This is far different from an earlier proposal--rejected by Saddam Hussein’s government last week--that Iraq allow U.N. police to enter the Kurdish areas to take over security from American and other allied troops.

“My understanding,” State Department press spokesman Richard Boucher told a press briefing, “is that there may be some preliminary agreement on some type of guard arrangements to be associated with the U.N. humanitarian effort. We don’t have the details, but we understand that discussions will continue this week between the U.N. and Iraqi authorities.”

Yet, even without the details, Boucher described the agreement as “a step in the right direction.”

An American diplomat explained later that the “guard arrangements” involved protection of the U.N. relief workers and not the Kurds. But, he went on, the U.S. government has long felt that a large number of U.N. personnel can serve as a deterrent simply “by virtue of being there.”

The announcement of the agreement is expected later this week from Baghdad, where Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, the U.N. official in charge of Iraqi refugees, has been meeting with Iraqi officials.

In other developments, as reported by wire services:

* Iraq released Associated Press correspondent Mark Fritz and his Kuwaiti translator, Salah Zamani, two days after they were detained by Iraqi police near the southern border with Kuwait. They were freed in Baghdad, where they were told exit permits were being arranged. Fritz, 35, said he and Zamani were arrested Sunday when they drove from Kuwait to Safwan in the demilitarized zone in southern Iraq.

* The Polish Embassy in Iraq will serve as diplomatic intermediary between the U.S. and Iraqi governments, the U.S. State Department announced. Polish diplomats will carry out that role at U.S. request in the absence of diplomatic relations between Washington and Baghdad. Iraq severed relations with the United States in early February, about three weeks after the allies launched the air war. The State Department announced earlier this month that the Iraqis had arranged to maintain a diplomatic presence in Washington under the sponsorship of the Algerian Embassy.