U.S. Readies Moves to Counter Iraqi Attacks on Kurds

The Clinton administration prepared Sunday for what looked likely to be a military response to Iraq’s invasion of its U.S.-protected Kurdish north, amid claims that Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard had massacred nearly 100 army defectors and launched new attacks in the region.

U.S. officials said it appeared that the Iraqi president was preparing for the possibility of retaliation by deploying surface-to-air missiles, dispersing his warplanes and putting the country’s air defense system on a higher state of alert.

This morning, a U.N. official reported that Hussein’s troops had withdrawn from the northern Iraqi city of Irbil that they overran Saturday.

“All Iraqis have left Irbil. We cannot see any more tanks or vehicles or artillery. They are about five kilometers [about three miles] away now,” the official told the Reuters news agency by telephone from Irbil.

The Iraqi attack on the northern Kurdish area compelled President Clinton to call other world leaders Sunday in hopes of garnering support for a response. The region has been protected by a U.S.-led coalition since Hussein’s last major offensive to put down a Kurdish rebellion in the region after his defeat in 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 to prohibit Iraqi warplanes from entering the airspace over the region, and Iraqi troops by and large avoided the sector until last week. Irbil is 12 miles north of the 36th parallel.

“The U.S. government is consulting closely with those who share our concerns about Hussein’s behavior,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said.

Earlier Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta suggested even more strongly that the administration would punish Iraq for the incursion into its Kurdish north--either militarily or diplomatically.

“I don’t want to say when or where or what, but . . . there will be a response. Saddam Hussein continues to remain a threat to his own people and to the region, and we have made it clear that this is unacceptable,” Panetta said.

“We have warned him that if he took that kind of action, there will be consequences,” he said.

A Pentagon official indicated that the U.S. response might be beyond the immediate crisis area. “Hussein has a proclivity to bully. We will respond in ways that constrain his ability to act and in ways that protect our vital interests,” he said.

The more than 300 U.S. warplanes and 20 warships in the region were on a high state of alert Sunday, and an alarmed Turkey shipped reinforcements to its border with Iraq.

U.S., French and British flights over the “no-fly” zone were doubled Sunday.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali announced that because of the situation in northern Iraq, he was delaying implementation of a plan worked out recently allowing Iraq to resume oil sales and use the revenue to buy food and humanitarian supplies for Iraqi citizens.

Iraq launched its offensive in Iraqi Kurdistan--part of a roughly defined area nominally controlled by the Kurds that arcs through southeast Turkey, northern Iraq and northwest Iran--early Saturday morning and quickly overran Irbil, the seat of Kurdish government.

Iraq characterized the tank-led offensive as a “limited military operation” and warned the United States to stay out. Iraqi 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 of Kurdistan, which has long held Irbil and recently received limited Iranian aid and arms.

A Patriotic Union spokesman said Sunday that secret police went from house to house with lists of Hussein’s opponents and that troops had blown up the headquarters of opposition political parties.

Iraqi troops executed defectors from Hussein’s army who were captured in a lightning attack on a camp outside Irbil, opposition and Iraqi Kurdish officials said.

“Ninety-six soldiers and officers were executed . . . in full view of the residents of Qushtapa,” about 10 miles south of Irbil, a spokesman for the opposition Iraqi National Congress, a U.S.-backed and CIA-funded coalition of Iraqi opposition groups, said in London. While the actions would fit with past Iraqi patterns of retribution, U.S. officials cautioned that some claims coming out of the isolated area were exaggerated and unreliable.

Iraqi intelligence units also searched Kurdish government offices and hauled away files, computers and other information in scenes reminiscent of Iraq’s raids on Kuwaiti facilities after its 1990 invasion of that country, according to the Iraqi National Congress.

Patriotic Union leader Jalal Talabani also reported armor movements and artillery shelling of villages near his stronghold at Sulaymaniyah.

U.S. officials disputed other claims that Iraqi warplanes had violated the “no-fly” zone and that Iraqi forces had moved on any other Kurdish towns beyond Irbil. Iraq has, however, engaged in intermittent shelling of the tiny nearby town of Chamchamal on the road to Sulaymaniyah, a U.S. source confirmed.

Through its state-controlled media, Baghdad issued boastful warnings to Washington about the consequences of intervention, comparing the dangers to the Vietnam War.

“The Iraqi people, in the forefront Iraqi Kurds, are ready to provide an example that will inevitably remind the Americans of the Vietnam complex,” the government paper Al Jumhuriya threatened in a front-page editorial.

The Clinton administration remained highly secretive about its own activities Sunday after officials from the president on down addressed the building crisis.

On Saturday, the president ordered reinforcements, including an air expeditionary force, sent to the Middle East. The expeditionary force would most likely go to Jordan, possibly by late Sunday night, and be in place no later than Tuesday, Pentagon officials said.

Both Kurdish and U.S. officials Sunday expressed deep concern that Iraq’s offensive may not end at Irbil, as Hussein looks at the possibilities of moving farther in the next few days.

A prime target could be Sulaymaniyah, about 30 miles south of the 36th parallel. Talabani, the Patriotic Union leader, warned the West that he would not be willing to wait indefinitely for Western intervention.

“I am going to tell you frankly. We are going to wait some days, or let us say one week, to see what the reaction is of the United States and the West. If the West betrays us . . . we will surely turn to anyone who is ready to help us,” he said.

Asked whether this could lead to an escalation of the conflict, Talabani said: “Of course, it means that the West will be finished in the area. The area will be divided into one group pro-Iraqi and one pro-Iranian.”

Turkish reporters who were in Irbil at the time of the joint attack by Masoud Barzani’s Democratic Party of Kurdistan and its Iraqi backers said it all happened so suddenly that the Iraqi Kurdish civilian population had no time to flee.

“We immediately jumped into our cars with the shells exploding around us. But all the exits of the city were blocked. We had to plead to be allowed through,” said one reporter. Talabani’s wife, Hero, and a number of key leaders of his Patriotic Union were reportedly captured.

The Democratic Party of Kurdistan, or KDP, has traditionally been perceived as pro-Western, and its spokesman tried hard to justify its alliance with Hussein.

“The KDP move to take control of Irbil was a desperate act to defend itself against mounting Iranian-PUK military pressure to end our movement. . . . The KDP has no intention to invite Iraqi forces back into northern Iraq,” the KDP spokesman said.

In Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller warned Baghdad to withdraw. “It is imperative for peace that Saddam ends the attack [he] has mounted with the Barzani forces around Irbil,” she said.

Turkey does not want to see a repeat of the refugee crisis that followed Hussein’s offensive against northern Iraq after the Gulf War--or the kind of political chaos that might benefit its own Kurdish rebels.

The KDP’s turn toward Iraq signals the likely end of the long uphill struggle by Western diplomats to bring the Iraqi Kurds together as a self-sustaining entity. Struggles over trade, money and power have already split them for more than three years.

“Saddam Hussein is not the only reason Iraq has reestablished a foothold in the north. The petty squabbling of the Kurdish leaders bears just as much responsibility,” a Pentagon official said Sunday.

Montalbano reported from Ankara and Wright from Washington. Special correspondent Hugh Pope in Istanbul, Turkey, contributed to this report.