Iraqi Offensive Has U.S. Forces on ‘High Alert’

President Clinton put American forces in the Persian Gulf on “high alert” Saturday and dispatched reinforcements to the region after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein launched a massive dawn offensive that quickly overran a key Kurdish city in U.S.-protected northern Iraq.

The assault was conducted by tank divisions consisting of more than 30,000 members of Iraq’s elite Republican Guard, according to Kurds and U.N. officials in the region.

The Iraqi forces were acting in tandem with the Democratic Party of Kurdistan, one faction of the feuding Kurds. They faced little resistance from the rival faction, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which had controlled Irbil, the unofficial Kurdish capital, officials said. The extent of military and civilian casualties could not be determined.

In a statement issued late Saturday, a spokesman for Iraq’s Revolutionary Command Council said Baghdad intended to withdraw its troops from the region soon, but he did not outline a precise timetable.

“In accordance with the plan agreed upon to extend aid and support for [the Democratic Party of Kurdistan] . . . our troops will return to former positions in a very short period,” the spokesman was quoted as saying by the official Iraqi News Agency.

There was no immediate indication whether the Iraqi assurance would be sufficient to prevent a possible U.S. military response.

And White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry, traveling with Clinton in Tennessee, said, “given the provocations of Iraq, we don’t put a lot of credibility in this. It’s not what they say; it’s what they do.”

The northern Kurdish area has been protected by a U.S.-led coalition since Hussein’s last major offensive to put down a Kurdish rebellion in the region in the wake of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Although Iraqi troops technically are not restricted from deploying there, the U.N. Security Council set up a “no-fly” zone above the 36th parallel prohibiting Iraqi warplanes from entering the airspace over the region, and Iraqi troops by and large avoided the sector until last week. Irbil is just 12 miles north of the 36th parallel.

The last time a U.S. plane shot at an Iraqi aircraft over the region was in December 1992, when a U.S. F-16 shot down a Soviet-made MIG fighter.

Earlier Saturday, during a campaign stop in Troy, Tenn., Clinton said the military situation in northern Iraq remained “unclear” and that speculation about American military action would be premature.

But in the latest of several warnings issued privately and publicly to Baghdad over the last week, the president said U.S. forces were fully prepared to do “whatever is necessary.”

Pentagon and National Security Council officials met in crisis sessions throughout the day to review the situation, and top administration officials were said to be returning to Washington from vacations.

Clinton’s national security team spent much of the day orchestrating an “international diplomatic effort” to determine what steps to take next, a senior U.S. official said.

“Both before and since [the Iraqi offensive], we have had contacts at a range of levels with countries that share our concerns,” the official said.

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Clinton was briefed on the situation and given a list of options, but a White House spokesman said the president had not made a final determination.

The administration refused to specify what reinforcements are being deployed to the region.

“There are people and equipment in motion, but that’s all we have to say at this point,” the senior official said.

“One more time, Saddam has shown that he is prepared to use force to change the status quo and advance his own agenda, in this case against his own people,” he said. “This is a dangerous man.”

The lightning attack by Iraqi troops on Irbil followed a weeklong military buildup and represented Hussein’s boldest action against the Kurdish north since 1991.

“Irbil is infested by Iraqis, who are consolidating their presence,” the senior official said. “There has been a good deal of shelling. We don’t have hard evidence on extent of damage in populated areas, but the resistance does not appear to have been strong.”

He said the Iraqi military moved “with relative ease and now controls all routes in and out” of the city.

Iraq characterized Saturday’s tank-led offensive as a “limited military operation,” and it warned the United States to stay out of the conflict. Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz said Baghdad was responding to a request from the Democratic Party of Kurdistan to intervene against the rival Patriotic Union, which has recently received limited Iranian aid and arms.

The latest phase of the long-running Kurdish crisis came to a head when serious fighting erupted between the two factions Aug. 15, ending a U.S.-brokered cease-fire. In a recent letter, Democratic Party of Kurdistan chief Masoud Barzani formally appealed for military aid to “thwart the Iranian threat,” Aziz claimed.

“We decided to launch a limited military operation in defense of our sovereignty, our people and their properties,” Aziz was quoted as telling the Iraqi News Agency.

But Clinton administration officials charged that Baghdad was merely using Iran’s ominous but comparatively limited involvement as a pretext to retake territory Iraq lost control of five years ago.

The Clinton administration had been working behind the scenes for a week to pressure Baghdad not to invade, Pentagon officials said.

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As Iraqi forces closed in on Irbil, the Patriotic Union leadership called for American intervention to deter the assault and to deal with the possibility of civilian refugees who might try to flee the area.

The original U.S.-led relief effort, “Operation Provide Comfort,” was launched to address the refugee crisis spawned by Iraq’s 1991 offensive against the Kurds, when more than 1 million Kurds fled across the borders of Turkey and Iran.

“This is a direct challenge to the United States and Provide Comfort. This is naked aggression. The United States should respond decisively and aggressively,” said Barham Saleh, the Patriotic Union representative in Washington. “The United States is allowing people to be slaughtered. We thought they had learned from Kuwait.”

Such Kurdish warnings have been frequent over the last several years, and the United States neither underrated nor ignored the current buildup, a senior administration official said, adding: “We were watching an evolving situation, and we were not in a rush to judgment.”

Iraq insisted that Washington no longer has a valid mission in Kurdistan, a roughly defined area nominally controlled by the Kurds that arcs through southeast Turkey, northern Iraq and northwest Iran. Aziz said the U.S.-led multinational force has brought “nothing but death, destruction, anarchy and the loss of opportunities for development and decent living” to the Kurds since the region came under U.S. protection.

McCurry, speaking earlier during a campaign stop in Paducah, Ky., said there was no justification for any “provocative action” on Hussein’s part.

Iraq, having lived for years under U.N. sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, only recently won U.N. and U.S. agreement to sell up to $2 billion worth of oil to help pay for badly needed humanitarian goods, including food and medicine. Malnutrition is now a chronic problem in Iraq, especially among children, according to independent relief groups.

The deal, the first exception to the U.N.-imposed economic sanctions, is scheduled to go into effect this month.

Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole said in a statement that the renewed skirmishes “reinforce my belief that the move to relax sanctions on the sale of Iraqi oil was premature and ill-advised and should not be implemented.”

The Clinton administration originally resisted the U.N.-approved “oil for food” plan, but it finally relented in August.

“As Americans, we need to be concerned not only about another humanitarian tragedy for the Kurds of Iraq but also about the potential resurgence of Saddam Hussein as a menace to the peace and stability of this vital region,” Dole said.

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From the administration’s viewpoint, the Iraqi action was a clear violation of the spirit of the postwar U.N. resolutions, and presumably it would be deemed sufficient to justify an American military response.

But any response by the U.S.-led coalition is likely to be complicated by the language of U.N. resolutions. Iraq is restricted only from flying over the region north of the 36th parallel. Southern Iraq, by contrast, has been off limits to both the Iraqi air force and the Republican Guard since Baghdad dispatched ground troops to the Kuwaiti border in 1994. The U.S. calculation has always been that Iraq would not risk moving on the ground without air support.

At the same time, one of the U.N. resolutions stipulates that Iraq cannot repress its own people, referring specifically to the Kurds.

Any U.S. action would be further complicated by the internal political dynamics of Kurdistan. Irbil has been under the control of the Patriotic Union, even though the city is putatively the administrative center of the Kurdish government that was set up by both Kurdish factions after the Gulf War with the help of the United States.

The Democratic Party of Kurdistan, which Iraq says invited Saturday’s intervention, has long tried to break the Patriotic Union’s hold on Irbil. A U.S. military response might effectively punish or be directed against the Democratic Party, a faction with which Washington has ties and for which it has been trying to act as an intermediary.

Special correspondent Hugh Pope in Istanbul, Turkey, and Times staff writers John M. Broder in Troy, Tenn., and James Gerstenzang in Washington contributed to this report.