-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,739915,00.html
}}}>Begin
Kurdish leader shuns US move to oust Saddam
Michael Howard in Salahaddin
Wednesday June 19, 2002
The Guardian
Kurds in northern Iraq will refuse to cooperate with any US-inspired covert action to
topple Saddam Hussein, a Kurdish leader said yesterday, responding to reports that
Washington is stepping up secret efforts to oust the Iraqi president.
"The Iraqi issue won't be solved by military action or covert action," said Massoud
Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic party, one of the two main Kurdish
groups controlling the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq.
"We cannot stop the US [from taking covert action], but we would like there to be
transparency and clarity, and for there to be no covers or curtains to hide behind,"
he said in an interview in Salahaddin, overlooking the regional capital, Irbil.
According to the US press, the Bush administration has approved a wide-ranging
programme of action aimed at bringing about a change of regime in Baghdad, an
outcome the White House believes is central to its worldwide fight against terrorism.
The CIA is reportedly being told to use any means to get rid of President Saddam,
including beefing-up support to opposition groups inside and outside Iraq, a massive
intelligence-gathering effort within Iraq, especially "where pockets of in tense anti-
Hussein sentiment have been detected", and the possible use of CIA and US
special forces teams with a licence to kill the Iraqi dictator if "acting in
self-defence".
The covert programme is being seen as a way of softening up the regime ahead of
any military strike. But its success, and that of the broader US plans for Iraq, will
rest largely on the degree of cooperation from the Kurds in the north and the Shi'ites
in the south - the main anti-Saddam forces in the country.
Despite a lapse into fratricidal warfare in the mid 1990s, the three-and-a-half million
Kurds who live in the Kurdish-controlled area have enjoyed an unprecedented
measure of autonomy and security since the establishment of the no-fly zone after
the Gulf war.
Mr Barzani said the Kurds now had "a united stand on Iraq" and were a factor of
modernisation and stability within the country. The KDP leader and Jalal Talabani,
who heads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, based in Sulaymaniyah, in the south-
east, have an estimated 80,000 troops under their command. But both men, wary of
past disappointments, are cautious of committing the Kurds to helping to remove
President Saddam without clear guarantees from Washington.
The Kurds, he said, would reject any solution that involved replacing the current
regime with another military dictatorship.
The Kurds were not asking for an independent state, but "there should be a prior
agreement on a federal solution for the Kurdish problem within a democratic,
pluralistic parliamentary Iraq".
The Kurds still harbour bitter memories from 1975, when the withdrawal of US and
Iranian support caused an abrupt end to their armed struggle against Baghdad.
The Shi'ites also remember President George Bush senior's encouragement to the
Iraqi people, after the Gulf war, to rise up against the regime. The rebellion that
followed was ruthlessly suppressed by Baghdad.
Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
End<{{{
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