Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 15, 1991 TAG: 9103150898
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NICOSIA, CYPRUS LENGTH: Medium
President Bush warned Saddam that using combat helicopters could delay a formal cease-fire in the Persian Gulf War. A U.S. newspaper reported that American troops were retaking positions they abandoned deep within Iraq, seeking to pressure Saddam.
While the troops had moved back to old positions they'd left inside Iraq, a senior U.S. officer said today, this was not done as a signal that Iraq should sign the permanent cease-fire.
Meanwhile, Shiite Muslim leaders accused the Iraqi president's Republican Guard soldiers of damaging some of Islam's holiest shrines during clashes in southern Iraq on Thursday.
Since the allied offensive two weeks ago that crushed Saddam's army in Kuwait and seized a large portion of southern Iraq, Baghdad has been struggling to maintain control over several insurrections.
Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said Iraqi troops rounded up residents from government-held parts of the city of Kirkuk, then strafed them with helicopters. He claimed hundreds were killed or wounded.
The rebel claims have been impossible to confirm because no Western reporters have been able to reach the fighting in recent days.
Talabani, who spoke in Damascus, Syria, also claimed the government used warplanes to attack protesters in other parts of Kurdistan in nothern Iraq.
He said Iraqi forces set four oil wells ablaze before being forced out of eastern Kirkuk, a major oil center.
He said Dohuk Province bordering Turkey "has been liberated" by the rebel forces fighting for autonomy from the central government.
Ayatollah Taqi al-Mudaressi, leader of the opposition Shiite Islamic Labor Organization, claimed rebels in the south shot down one helicopter gunship and seized an underground arms depot that included surface-to-surface missiles.
Mudaressi also claimed the rebels had found chemical weapons at a farm owned by Saddam's eldest son, Udai. Opposition figures earlier reported Udai's death, but he has since been quoted in the Iraqi media.
On Thursday, Bush said U.S.-led allied troops, who control 20 percent of Iraq's territory following the Gulf War, "are not going to be - all of them - out of there until there's a cease-fire, a formalized cease-fire."
Elements of the 101st Airborne and the 1st Cavalry Army divisions on Wednesday reoccupied their most advanced positions in the Euphrates River valley, the Los Angeles Times reported today.
The dispatch from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, quoted Marine Brig. Gen. Richard Neal, deputy director of operations for the U.S. Central Command.
"The purpose is to maintain a presence until the cease-fire is agreed to," Neal was quoted as saying in an interview with the newspaper.
But Neal told The Associated Press today there were "other ways to send signals." He said the Army divisions had reoccupied positions they'd taken by the time the war ended on Feb. 28 in order to maintain troops on the ground there, rather than cover the area by helicopter reconnaissance.
Officers thought they could cover the northern area well enough by helicopter, Neal said, but when Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of U.S. forces in the war, learned what they had done, he ordered the troops back to the front.
"He said, `No, I want you on the ground up there, not covering it by flying over it periodically,' " Neal said. He said Schwarzkopf "wanted them at those positions that they were at prior to the cessation of hostilities."
Although fighting with the allies has ended, Iraq has yet to meet all the U.N. requirements under which a permanent cease-fire would take effect.
In other developments:
Bush and French President Francois Mitterrand failed Thursday to settle upon a unified approach in the quest for permanent Middle East peace.
In fact, their afternoon of summitry on Martinique appeared to produce subtle differences on such critical questions as who should represent the Palestinians and what should be done about post-war turmoil within Iraq.
Bush, midway through a five-day swirl of consultations with key allied leaders, acknowledged that he and Mitterrand had "not come across or settled on one path, one single approach to try to solve the Palestine-Israel question."
"But what we're now doing is trying to find new approaches . . . not by dictation but through consultation," Bush added at a news conference before flying to Bermuda for talks Saturday with British Prime Minister John Major. "All ideas," Bush said, "should be put on the table and discussed."
The Red Cross handed over 499 prisoners of war to Iraqi officials today after a four-day delay because of the chaos in Iraq. Twelve Red Cross-chartered buses drove into Iraq after the POWs were handed over near the Saudi desert town of Arar.
Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh, who met Thursday with Baker, said the two sides found "a lot of common ground."
by CNB