No part in US attack without guarantees, says Iraqi Kurd group

SALAHUDDIN, (Southern Kurdistan), Oct 17 (AFP) One of the two factions running northern Iraq has told the United States that it will not take part in any attack against Saddam Hussein unless it has clear guarantees over the future of the Kurdish enclave.

"We have had bad experiences, well-documented experiences, and therefore we are very careful of making any commitments or accepting any approach that suggests we will be used and then thrown to the side," Jawher Nahmegh Salim, a top member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), told AFP.

"We have an area of between 10 and 15 percent of Iraq that has now been liberated, and yes we have an army. But the terms of us being a part of any operations depends on the objective, the type of government envisaged and whether we are assured our rights or not."

The KDP and the other main Iraqi Kurdish faction, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), are both being courted by Washington as it steps up its preparations for war with Baghdad and struggles to cobble together a post Saddam government for Iraq.

But the potentially prominent role of Iraq's Kurds has sounded alarm bells in Turkey, a key military ally of Washington and deeply opposed to any Kurdish nationalism, and the United States appears undecided over a post-"regime change" scenario for Iraq.

"The people of Iraqi Kurdistan will have to be a factor in any plans that America may have," said Salim, a deputy to KDP leader Massoud Barzani and a top member of the group's politburo.

Noting that "all indications are pointing towards an imminent attack," he did however outline the party's strict terms.

"I can assure you that we Kurds, in the KDP, have set conditions for participating in any operation. One is what is the alternative government -- will it be a democratic one," he said, alluding to Iraq's successive iron fisted regimes.

"Number two, we would want assurances that our rights in the federal state would be guaranteed by the new regime," he explained.

"Outside of this environment, and until we get these guarantees, we will not commit to any adventure and be used as has happened in the past," Salim said in an interview late Wednesday in Salahuddin, the KDP's mountaintop political base just north of the Iraqi Kurdish administrative centre in Arbil.

He said the group had yet to be given any battle or political plan from Washington: "We do not believe they are in a position right now to share that kind of information with the likes of us."

And as a word of caution to US President George W. Bush, he gave a long list of "betrayals" of Kurds by the international community and especially US leaders, including former presidents Richard Nixon and George Bush Snr, and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

"During the uprising after the Gulf War in 1991, which was at first supported by (former president) Bush, we were on the outskirts of Baghdad, but the US turned its back," he said.

"We will not risk the democratic experiment we have established in the past decade," he added, refering to the Iraqi Kurds' autonomous enclave's development since it became off limits to Baghdad in 1991 and protected by US and British warplanes.

But he said he was optimistic that this time around, the United States would not make the same mistake again.

"American thinking has changed after September 11," he said, referring to the terror attacks on New York and Washington last year. "They have to have a different outlook that it no longer suffices to support totalitarian regimes and dictators."