Kitêbxaneya Kurdî

Press about the Kurds

August 28, 2002

Kurd leader says reassured by US promise on Turkey

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

LONDON - The United States has promised Kurds in northern Iraq that Turkey will not take part in any U.S. attack to remove President Saddam Hussein, an Iraqi Kurdish leader said on Wednesday.

Jalal Talabani, whose fighters control part of northern Iraq, said U.S. officials had responded to concern among Iraqi opposition groups that Turkish participation in a U.S. attack would destabilise Iraq and anger its Kurdish population, which occasionally comes under attack from Turkish forces.

"The United States has the technology and logistics to stage an attack to change the regime on their own. They do not need us or anyone else," Talabani told Reuters after meeting with Iraqi exiles in London.

"The United States promised us in Washington that there would be no external interference from Turkey or Iran," said Talabani, referring to a meeting between six opposition leaders and U.S. officials earlier this month to discuss the future of Iraq.

Turkey, fearful of Kurdish nationalism in its own borders, opposes the formation of any Kurdish state inside neighbouring northern Iraq and keeps an eye on developments in the enclave.

Turkey regularly sends troops into northern Iraq, largely to strike at its own Kurdish rebels who have bases there.

Talabani, who heads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Massoud Barazani, whose group controls the rest of northern Iraq, say they want autonomy for the Kurds within a federal structure that keeps Iraq united.

Both have said they are worried by the prospect of a U.S. attack on Iraq, fearing that any turmoil could jeopardise the fragile autonomy and prosperity they have built in their mountain region since the end of the Gulf War.

MIXED SIGNALS

Turkey allows U.S. and British warplanes to fly over northern Iraq from its southern Incirlik airbase to enforce one of two "no-fly-zones" set up over Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.

But Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said on Wednesday that Turkey, a member of NATO, was still opposed to a U.S.-led military campaign to topple the Iraqi leader.

Talabani said the Kurdish opposition had urged the United States to back what he described as 100,000 anti-Saddam fighters mostly stationed in northern Iraq -- to march on Baghdad and dispose of Saddam, but that the United states had not responded.

"When the time comes, tens of thousands more would take up arms against the regime," Talabani said. "We told the United States things it did not like, such as that the Iraqi people should be the ones performing the regime change."

"U.S. officials have told us that they were determined to bring down the regime. But Iraq is a big country. The United states cannot control the streets and prevent internal fighting if the regime falls. It needs the opposition (after any attack)," Talabani added.

The Kurds have been generally wary of the United States after they rose against Saddam in the wake of the Gulf War. They were defeated after the United States, which urged them to revolt, did not come to their aid.

© Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Reuters