Allies Resist Involvement in Kurdish-Iraqi Clashes

DAHUK, Iraq â€”  Coalition forces in northern Iraq will not be drawn deeper into providing security in the region despite recurring attacks by Kurds on Iraqi police, a U.S. spokesman said Sunday.

“We don’t think the incidents have any dimensions that would necessitate any revision in our plans,� said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Philip Crowley, a spokesman for the allied command at Incirlik, Turkey. “It is really something the Iraqis and Kurds themselves should work out.�

About 2,000 Kurds stormed the police station in the provincial capital of Dahuk on Saturday. There have been three similar attacks this month on the police station in Zakhu, near the Turkish border.

U.S. Army military police protected Iraqi officers in Zakhu. But in Dahuk, which lies outside the allied security zone, a small allied security detail left Kurdish rebel leaders to disperse the crowd.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jay Garner, commander of the security operation in Iraq, said fears that the allies are slipping into a quagmire in the country are easing.

“My gut feeling is that it’s going well,� Garner said during a visit to Dahuk, a key Kurdish population center about 50 miles south of Iraq’s border with Turkey.

Still, a State Department official said the allies want Western aid workers to stay in Dahuk for a “couple of months� after allied military forces withdraw.

In Dahuk, large numbers of Kurdish refugees poured in Sunday. U.S. Army Col. Don Kirchoffner, a spokesman at the Incirlik base, said 22,000 more arrived, bringing the city’s population to close to 100,000.

About 350,000 people lived in the area before the exodus.

In other developments:

* Japan plans to provide $500 million for Kurdish refugees and environmental cleanup after the war, the Kyodo news service reported on Sunday. That is the amount Washington contends Tokyo still owes from a previous pledge.

* Iraq has estimated the number of its deaths in the Persian Gulf War at 110,000 to 150,000, an unofficial French group investigating the war reported Sunday. That includes 35,000 to 45,000 civilians and 75,000 to 100,000 soldiers, said members returning from a six-day fact-finding mission to Baghdad. The group was made up mainly of leftist writers, lawyers, anti-racism activists and a former general.

* Kuwait’s martial-law court Sunday gave lawyers for 17 suspected collaborators, including the first accused of murder, until June 9 to prepare their defense. A total of 175 cases of alleged collaboration, some involving more than one suspect, are to be brought to trial over the next two months.

Six defendants appeared in court Sunday, and all pleaded innocent. Lawyers for most of the rest also entered innocent pleas.