Kurdish Leader Begins Quest to Save His People : Diplomacy: He seeks Western aid to ward off misery caused by a brutal winter and stringent Iraqi economic sanctions.

Hunger, winter misery and an economic blockade of his people by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein have launched Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani on a rare foreign tour starting today. Barzani--who will visit Turkey, Britain, France, Germany and possibly the United States--hopes to rekindle Western interest in the plight of his 3 million people.

“The tragedy of the Kurds is not over,” said Hushyar Zibari, Barzani’s chief of foreign relations. “Unless some more action is taken by Western governments who were instrumental in saving us from last year’s calamity, what has been achieved might be reversed.”

Two million refugees took to the mountains of Turkey and Iran last March when a post-Gulf War Kurdish rebellion against Hussein collapsed. A U.S.-led rescue mission, Operation Provide Comfort, brought most Kurds back to their homeland.

But Baghdad slapped an economic blockade on the Kurdish region of Iraq last October, disrupting food and fuel supplies and cutting off salaries to the 350,000 state employees there.

Now one of the harshest winters in memory has piled snow up to the roofs of many of the villages that are still standing after 30 years of devastating conflict with Baghdad. Tens of thousands of people are living in temporary shelters protected by plastic sheets.

“There is real hunger. People are begging for food. Unless the blockade is lifted, the situation may lead to an explosion and food riots, especially in the urban areas,” Zibari said.

Kurdish officials believe the solution is not a replay of last year’s emergency effort but some kind of Western pressure on Iraq to end the siege of the 15,000-square-mile area controlled by Kurdish guerrillas. Recent travelers to Kurdistan, a Kurdish-populated region that extends into Iran and Turkey, say the blockade is backed by a 350-mile line of Iraqi tanks, armor and soldiers reaching across Iraq.

How to prevent Iraqi troops from marching back in to reconquer the mountains is the biggest problem for Barzani, 44, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the principal guerrilla faction in the eight-party Iraqi Kurdistan Front, which controls northern Iraq. Barzani, who has not traveled outside the region since 1989, has been unwilling to trust the West or to encourage direct intervention. Officials say he remembers how in 1975 the United States and the Shah of Iran abandoned the revolt started by his father, Mulla Mustafa Barzani.