
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 2, 1991                   TAG: 9104020136
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

U.S. REJECTS KEEPING TROOPS IN IRAQ TO PROTECT REFUGEES

A growing fear that thousands of Iraqi refugees under allied protection will be slaughtered once U.S. troops go home will not affect plans to remove most American forces as rapidly as possible, administration officials said Monday.

Pentagon officials said that the United States will not assume responsibility for the safety of an estimated 25,000 Iraqi civilians who fled from their homes in southern Iraq as loyalist forces systematically crushed an insurgency.

"The bottom line here is, if you're suggesting we would stay purely for a purpose of protecting the refugees, we won't," a senior Department of Defense official said Monday. "We would try to find another arrangement for them. There are other vehicles - U.N. observers, other international bodies - that are more appropriate."

But another military official said that the U.S. troops would move whether international relief agencies assume responsibility for the civilians.

"This is the chaos that occurs in war, particularly when there is a civil war going on simultaneously," a senior military official said. "After we leave, we are under no obligation to them. You can say cold-heartedly that legally we could turn every one of these people away, but at same time you see men, women and children starving and without water, and you must show compassion and do something."

This official complained that the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations have been slow to organize relief efforts.

"We are trying to find a medium of compromise" with the Red Cross to provide shelter and some measure of security, the official added.

Iraqi civilians technically are not refugees under the U.N. definition because they are still in their own country. If they crossed into Kuwait, they might qualify. But it seems unlikely that Kuwait would be willing to accept very many, if any, of them.

In addition to the Iraqis, the civilians who have sought American protection include Palestinians and others who were expelled from Kuwait after the Persian Gulf War.

by CNB