Kurds Returning to the Dream of Independent State : Iraq: Stalled talks prompt leader to disavow any agreement that might be reached with Hussein.

Five months of talks about an autonomous Kurdistan in northern Iraq have stalled, and a growing number of Kurdish leaders are looking at alternatives, including the old Kurdish dream of declaring an independent state, the chief Kurdish negotiator with Baghdad says.

Sami Abdurrahman, veteran leader of the Kurdistan Popular Democratic Party, says he no longer advocates that the Kurds sign the accord that he has been negotiating with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“I did nothing else for five months . . . but now the negotiations are stuck,” Abdurrahman said in an interview this week at his headquarters in the mountainside town of Rawanduz, 220 miles north of Baghdad.

Rawanduz is in the heart of Kurdish-guerrilla-controlled northern Iraq. More than 2 million of Iraq’s 4 million Kurds now live here in increasing confidence. They include hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled the collapse of their rebellion after the Persian Gulf War and were helped to return home by a massive U.S. military-led relief effort in April.

Leaders of the eight-party Iraqi Kurdistan Front said their next move will be decided by the outcome of a tour of Washington and other Western capitals by a delegation led by Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The visitors are seeking a political statement of support for the Kurds.

The Kurds also want assurances that the West will not boycott them if they do sign the autonomy deal. It would allow them to elect a regional government with wide local powers--but under national laws that would protect the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party, limit the Kurds’ rights to external contacts and force them into a binding alliance with Hussein.

The leader of the biggest group in the Kurdistan Front, Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, said the autonomy accord is vital to allow his war-weary people to start again after 30 years of conflict.

Remembering what the Kurds see as Western betrayals, such as the abrupt end of U.S. support for the mountain tribes in 1975, Barzani concedes that he does not expect any foreign commitment that would equal the support expressed for Israeli or Palestinian national rights.

But he told reporters in Shaklawa, near Rawanduz, that a Western statement should broadly support anything “from autonomy to independence,” and added: “The U.N. Security Council, or France and Britain, should just say they support the right of autonomy for the Kurds.”

Kurdish leaders are traditionally cautious in speaking about independence. Although their 25 million people make up one of the world’s biggest nations without a state, they are weak and divided among regions in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey--countries that historically have not welcomed their presence.

“The borders dividing Kurdistan are artificial. We are one people with a common history,” Barzani said.

Western diplomats confirm that the Kurds of northern Iraq are still diplomatically on their own. “It’s basically between them and Baghdad now,” said one.

But Abdurrahman said the three other major Kurdish parties are increasingly opposed to the autonomy accord and are considering other alternatives, including what he called the “pipe dream” of independence. “International borders are changing. If the Soviet and Yugoslav borders are not sacred, why should ours be?” he said. “All we lack (for independence) is international recognition.”

Barzani still holds out hope that the deal can be signed before winter. Although the Kurdistan Front insists that it remains unified, Barzani’s differences with Talabani, whose party is the second biggest force in Iraqi Kurdish politics, are increasingly visible.

But even Barzani says there remains a fundamental problem of whether the autonomy zone would include the oil-rich region of Kirkuk and big areas such as Khanekin, Mandeli and Sanjak.