U.S. to Try Mediating Between Iraqi Kurds

The Clinton administration directed its top Middle East expert Wednesday to try to mediate a cease-fire between rival Kurdish factions whose fighting has permitted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to regain some of his lost authority in northern Iraq.

The State Department said Assistant Secretary of State Robert Pelletreau will meet separately, starting this weekend, with Masoud Barzani, leader of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan, and rival warlord Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

An agreement between the factions, brokered last year by the United States and Turkey, broke down Aug. 31 when Barzani’s forces, backed by the Iraqi army, seized the regional capital of Irbil from Talabani’s troops. Talabani’s faction, which is sometimes allied with Iran, has since recaptured some of its lost territory.

Pelletreau’s talks, at an undisclosed site, will be an attempt by Washington to wean the factions from their alliances with Iran and the Hussein government and to restore U.S. influence in northern Iraq, which was turned into an autonomous Kurdish enclave after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

“We believe that continued division among the Kurds is not in the best interests of the Kurdish people,” State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said. “They have a common self-interest in stability and in peace. Any further fighting will simply harm longer-term Kurdish interests.”

The Kurdish civil war, he said, can benefit only the governments of Iran and Iraq.

Although Iraqi troops pulled back last month after an initial onslaught on Irbil, U.S. officials say Hussein used the attack to infiltrate secret police agents into the region, which had been essentially closed to his regime since the end of the Gulf War.

According to news agency reports from northern Iraq, Talabani’s forces have taken control of the main roads leading to Irbil in preparation for a possible attempt to regain the city.

Reuters news service reported Tuesday that the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said 6,000 of its fighters were gathering at the Barisan Valley, 44 miles northeast of Irbil. The agency quoted Kosrat Rassoul, a senior official of Talabani’s faction, as saying: “We have two roads going to Irbil, and we are getting close to the third.”

Meanwhile, the Iranian news agency IRNA said Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani met with an Iraqi envoy to discuss the crisis in northern Iraq. The report said that the Iraqi, who was not named, “voiced Iraq’s desire for good neighborly relations with Iran and for expansion of mutual relations.”

From the U.S. standpoint, the possibility of an Iran-Iraq accord on northern Iraq is as ominous as the Barzani-Talabani fighting. The United States wants to limit the influence of both those countries while attempting to restore its good relations with both Kurdish factions.

Burns said there was no evidence that either Iran or Iraq has been involved directly in the fighting over the last week or so. But he said Talabani is still being influenced by Iran and Barzani by Iraq.