Kurd Faction Recaptures Iraqi City

In a lightning counteroffensive, an Iraqi Kurdish faction Sunday recaptured a key city in northern Iraq that it had lost six weeks ago to rival forces backed by Saddam Hussein.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) advanced from strongholds along the Iranian border and swept back into the northeastern city of Sulaymaniyah, the headquarters it lost in September. Despite clashes elsewhere, both sides reported that the city changed hands without a fight.

“The flags changed from yellow back to green overnight. It’s all quiet now. People are even working,” said a foreign aid worker reached by satellite telephone in Sulaymaniyah, a city of about 750,000 people.

Amid charges by the rival faction that the PUK is being supported by Iranian forces, the counteroffensive dragged Iraq and its neighbors into new and dangerous territory just as Western powers were hoping to see stability in the wake of the recent heavy fighting between the PUK and the Hussein-backed Democratic Party of Kurdistan (KDP).

In that fighting, the Iraqi president dispatched his forces in support of the KDP and effectively extended Baghdad’s control over all of northern Iraq for the first time since the United States and its allies created a Kurdish haven after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

In the wake of Hussein’s invasion of the north, President Clinton ordered strikes on Iraqi air defense systems in southern Iraq and extended the southern “no-fly” zone north from the 32nd parallel to the 33rd parallel, near the southern outskirts of Baghdad. In addition, 3,500 U.S. troops were dispatched to Kuwait to fill out an armored unit of 1,200 soldiers already in the country.

There was no indication that Iraqi troops were involved in the latest fighting.

On Sunday, Hussein chaired a meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council and leaders of the ruling Baath Party to discuss the developments.

The official Iraqi News Agency, quoting a spokesman for the meeting, said Iraqi leaders urged the warring Kurdish factions to halt fighting and resume peace talks with Baghdad.

“We call on the parties which have resumed fighting to keep away the foreign powers and not deal with them. We also call on them to start talks between themselves,” the spokesman said.

In recent weeks, the KDP had resisted repeated calls from Baghdad to start talks on a new self-rule agreement for Kurdistan. Instead, the Kurdish faction had repeatedly met with U.S. officials to patch up its relationship with the United States.

A KDP spokesman said Sunday that the group’s attempt at reconciliation with the United States triggered what it alleges was overwhelming Iranian support for the PUK’s weekend counteroffensive.

“We were supposed to have a meeting with American officials in Washington in the next few days. This fighting is the Iranians’ way of saying to the Americans, ‘Look, I am here,’ ” said Dilshad Miran, the KDP’s spokesman in London. “The Iraqi government will also be very alarmed by the Iranian entrance into Iraqi Kurdistan through the backdoor.”

The PUK denied any Iranian involvement, nor could it be confirmed by foreign officials in Sulaymaniyah. Both sides routinely exaggerate foreign participation in their internecine fighting, but the PUK has in the past allowed Iranian forces free passage through its area.

“Iran has started a major invasion. . . . We appeal to the international community to intercede,” KDP leader Masoud Barzani said in a statement as he pulled his troops back to the mountains about 50 miles west of Sulaymaniyah and 30 miles southeast of Irbil, the regional capital his forces captured in late August.

Although outside intervention seems unlikely at this point, the possibility of greater regional conflict remains.

The KDP forces have withdrawn to a location within range of support from Iraqi troops, and the faction may feel forced to call in artillery backing to keep the PUK from advancing on Irbil. Turkey may also take action if it sees a new threat to its border with Iraq.

There were no reliable assessments of casualties in the latest fighting, which first flared along the Iranian border overnight Friday. The PUK, led by Jalal Talabani, said that the bodies of a total of about 200 KDP fighters were left on three battlefields.

The new instability came just as the KDP was trying to establish a new government for Iraqi Kurdistan, where about 3.5 million people have lived under the control of Iraqi Kurdish guerrilla factions since the end of the Gulf War.

Iraqi Kurdistan has been in political limbo since the war. Western governments and regional powers have been loath to contemplate the emergence of an independent Kurdistan but have also signaled their opposition to any reunification of northern Iraq that might strengthen Hussein.

“None of the regional governments want to see stability in northern Iraq,” lamented the KDP’s Miran.