.Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro
de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
mixed in with the refugees were hundreds
pro-Kurdish guerrillas, whom the
Turkish military has been battling ever
since.
To prevent that sort of the thing from
happening again, Turkey's leaders had
already considered sending troops to a
narrow strip across northern Iraq to
block refugees from crossing the border.
Kurdish officials here say that the new
Turkish plans appear to go much further,
envisioning troops across the iégion.
Some 1,200 Turkish troops are
already operating in parts of northern
,'Iraq, mainly to hunt down pro"Kurdish
guerrillas who might be trying to operate
in Turkey.
, Dizayee, tb,e Kurdish official, called
the various Turkish rationales lor intervention
"pretexts." Like many Kurdish
leaders, Dizayee expressed pride in the
democratic institutions and public àdministration,
the Kurds have built during
the 12 years of autonomy they have
enjoyed in nortlJ.ern Iraq. He expressed
dismay at the prospect that those institutions
might be swamped by an American-led
military attack.
"We think these democratic institutions
have set a precedent for the rest of
Iraq," Dizayee said. "If they were undermined,
it would reflect badlyon the
whole operation. ri
'
The American-led negotiations unfolding
in Ankara appear to be focused
on choreographing the simultaneous
entry ofAmerican combat troops and
''lUrkish soldiers into northern Iraq.
One Kurdish official, speaking on the
condition ,of anonymity, said that
Khalilzad had called the meeting to
give each group its final set of marching
orders for the war.
There were signs that the negotiations,
scheduled to continued Thursday,
were not going as smoothly as the
Americans had hoped.
One senior official with the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan, speaking on the
condition of anonymity, said that his,
group was eagerly anticipating the arrival
of American soldiers, but not that
of the Turks. "We regard America as liberators,"
the official said.. "and our'
neighbors as loote,rs."
r
Bush urges the UN
to make a decision
President pushes for war resolution;
France says there is still an alternative,
• arescheduled to meet with Iraqi offi-
By Joel Bnnkley
cials over the weekend to discuss their
The New York TImes
' clear public concern that Iraqi compliance
with lastautumn's UN resolution
callingfor disarmament has been inad- ,
equate. After that, they are to report to
the Security Council on Feb. 14,which
,now appears to be a critical day. Jean-
David Levitte, the French ambassador
to Washington, said France would nöt
make up its mind about whether to alter
its position until after that report.
"We want more active cooperation,"
he said. "We'll see on the 14th where we
are; and we'll decide together what are
the next steps." In the meantime,
WASHINGTON: Turning up the heat
on Iraq, President George W. Bush on
Friday worked to persuade reluctant
members of the Security Council to
support a new resolution authorizing
war, but he made no apparent headway
with the French.
"The UN Security Council has got to
make up its mind soon as to whether or
not 'its word means anything," Bush
said at a swearing in ceremony Friday
morning for his new Treasury secretary,
John Snow. "This is a defining moment
for the UN Security Council."
But Jacques Chirac, the French president,
speaking on French television,
said, "There's still an alternative to war.
It's the responsibility of each member
of the Security Council to explore all
the possibilities to the end."
Al: the same time Friday, the United
States ordered another aircraft carrier
to I~q, the.fifth,and military officials
,said American forces in the region now .
numbered 113,000,enough to carry out'
an attack in concert with an air assault,
officials said. On Thursday afternoon,
the army's 10lst Airborne Division, the '
military's largest air assault unit, re-,
ceived orders to send more than 15,000
troops and nearly,300 combat helicopters
to the Gulf. ,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
visiting American troops at a base
in Italy, said he did not expect any war
with Iraq to last long. "It is-not knowable
how long tha~ conflict would last,"
Rumsfeld said. "It could lastsix days,
six weeks. I doubt six months."
"U:ni~ Nations weilI>Q,D!l inspecto~
Levitte said, speaking to the United
State Institute of Peace, a governmentfùnded
research group, "let's have the
inspectors do their job."
But Bush appears to have made up
his mind already. Speaking of Saddam
Hussein, the Iraqi president, he said, "If
he wanted to disarm, he would have
disarmed" already. ,
Saddam, headdèd,has "treated the
demands ~fthe world, as a joke~", .
, Bush spoke by phone to two members
,Qf the Security Council who remain recalcitrant,
in his view: France and
China. Neither' offered him much
solace. Speaking to Jiang Zemin; the
Chinese president, Bush was told that
China, like France, wanted to give the
weapons inspectors more time, the Xinhua
news agency reported.
Later Friday, Bush spoke to Chirac,
who told him that they share a common
. objective, disarming Iraq. Still, Chirac
added, "we can disarm Saddam Hussein
without going to war," his spokesman
reported after the phone calL Both
France and China hQld the power to
veto any new Security ÇouncU resolution
to authorize war. Britain has suggested
it will offer one next week.
Almost every French official with responsibility
in this area took the opportunity
to speak out against war Friday.
Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, the French
ambassador to the United Nations, said
that "the time has not come" for another
resolution.
'
Rumsfeld took a slap at the French
Friday, suggesting that it was Paris's
policy to be contrary. ' .
"They are frequently recalcitrant
about a lot of things," he said in an in~
terview with the Chicago television station
WFLD, made public by the Penta-
, gon on Friday. "Any given day or week,
their role in NATO, they seem to be the
country that disagrees ,with a lot of other
countries."
Speaking to reporters at the White
House on Thursday evening, Bush
seemed not terribly concerned about
the opposition he is facing from France'
and other countries.
"The United States, along with a
growing coalition of nations is resolved
'
to take whatever action is necessary to
defend ourselves and disarm the Iraqi
regime," he said, adding that he expected
Saddam to begin another round of
"empty concessions and transparently
false denials."
"No doubt he will playa last-minute
game of deception," Bush said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell's
speech to the Security Council on Wednesday,laying
out intelligence evidence
against Iraq, was effective among the
American public, several opinion polls
have found. They showed that the number
of Americans who support the idea
of war has increased in the last 48
hours.
Thm Daschle, the Senate Democratic
leader, seemed to fall in behind the
president Friday when he said "the
game is over" for Saddam, adding that
Bush's comments "put Saddam Hussein
on notice and sent a message to the
United Nations that if they are going to
act, they have to act soon."
In Baghdad on Friday, Agence
France-Presse reported, the United
States said it would close its last remaining
diplomatic station in Iraq, the
American interest section housed in the
Polish Embassy.
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