ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 1, 1996 TAG: 9609030076
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BAGHDAD, IRAQ
SOURCE: From The New York Times and The Associated Press
Ignoring strong U.S. warnings, armored Iraqi divisions pushed into northern Iraq Saturday and reportedly seized a main city in the Kurdish enclave, prompting President Clinton to place U.S. troops in the region on high alert and send in reinforcements.
Iraq's action threatened to spark a new confrontation with the United States and other Western nations that created the enclave after the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
President Clinton, campaigning in Tennessee, said Saturday he had ordered U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf to be placed on ``high alert,'' and that ``they are now being reinforced.''
On Friday he stepped up air patrols and ordered the 23,000 U.S. troops already in the region to be ``prepared for any contingency.''
The two Kurdish factions, the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, have periodically appealed for help from Iraq and Iran in their conflicts.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party's radio station said the group had captured the city of Irbil, but did not mention receiving any help from the Iraqis. Christopher Lee, speaking from the office of the U.N. High Commissioner For Refugees in Baghdad, said the city had fallen with little resistance.
However, PUK spokesman Adnan al-Mufti said Saturday night from London that ``fighting is still going on and people are resisting.''
``Hundreds of [Iraqi] tanks are inside the city. The army is storming houses and arresting people,'' he said.
He acknowledged that the Iraqi army had captured about ``70 percent of the city,'' which is 180 miles north of Baghdad.
U.S. officials estimated that Iraq's force included 30,000 to 40,000 troops backed by artillery and tanks. The action was the most significant military activity in northern Iraq since the United States, Britain and France began enforcing the exclusion zone to protect the Kurds, who have been waging a war for independence in Iraq, as well as in parts of Iran and Turkey.
After pounding the rebellious Kurds in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, Iraq has periodically launched new attacks along the demarcation lines in the north that have separated the Kurds and the Iraqis.
Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, said the incursion into the Kurdish enclave was a ``limited military operation'' to answer an appeal by the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
The Kurdish group had been cooperating with Iran, the country's longtime enemy, Iraq told the state-run Iraqi News Agency. Iraq was responding to ``unjustified Iranian aggression,'' the news agency said, quoting an unidentified government spokesman.
Iraq regards the Kurdish safe haven as an impediment in its domestic affairs, but Saddam generally had observed guidelines set down by a U.N. resolution and refrained from launching a major strike to bring it back under his control until Saturday.
``There's not any justification for any provocative action from Saddam Hussein,'' said White House press secretary Michael McCurry. ``Any military action in that region works against the purposes of U.N. Security Council resolutions'' designed to protect northern Iraq's Kurds.
Iraq has also accused rival Iran of sending troops into the safe haven recently to help the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
Aziz railed against the U.S., British and French forces that monitor northern Iraq. He accused them of bringing ``to the Kurds nothing but death, destruction, anarchy and the loss of opportunities for development and decent living.''
The United States mediated a cease-fire last year, but it collapsed Aug. 17 when the two factions resumed fighting amid differences over customs revenues from a road between Turkey and northern Iraq.
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Map by AP. color.by CNB