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

DATE: THURSDAY, April 18, 1991                   TAG: 9104180353
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: DIYARBAKIR, TURKEY                                LENGTH: Medium

KURD AID PLAN PLEASES, STUNS

The Turkish government Wednesday applauded President Bush's plan to build giant camps for Kurdish refugees inside Iraq, but the decision blindsided international relief experts and American military planners here struggling to catch up with the needs of a half a million desperate people.

Helicopter-borne U.S. troops crossed into northern Iraq on Wednesday to begin scouting sites for Westerm-supervised camps, But hunger, disease and cold took a mounting toll of lives at the sprawling refugee camps along the Turkish border.

"It was like the start of the war all over again - somebody calling in the middle of the night to say `Turn on CNN,' " said one American official here wondering how the new plan would work and how it would change what is already the biggest humanitarian effort in American military history.

For Turkey, which has kept the refugees barricaded on its mountain border on the grounds that it could not care for them on Turkish soil, the American decision was good news.

"Turkey's proposal to care for the refugees in Iraq has finally been accepted by the whole world," said Hayri Kozakcioglu, the governor of southeastern Turkey with headquarters in Diyarbakir, the world's largest Kurdish city.

Kozakcioglu said that Turkey would provide logistic support for the new camps to be located in Iraq on flatlands close to the Turkey-Iraq highway and starting not far from the Turkish border.

The Iraqi News Agency quoted Iraq's foreign minister, Ahmed Hussein Khuddayer al-Sammaraei, as saying it was unnecessary for allied troops to protect the refugees because Iraq had agreed to cooperate with U.N. relief plans.

U.N. officials, however, could not confirm that arrangements had been settled for the care of refugees in Iraq. U.S. officials said they didn't expect Iraq to interfere with the foreign troops.

In the first nine days of the relief effort, a U.S.-British-French airlift delivered 1,350 tons of supplies to the refugees, said Navy Cmdr. John Woodhouse, spokesman for the U.S. military in Diyarbakir. As a measure of what is still to come, the United States is promising to deliver just over a pound of food and supplies per person to up to 700,000 people - about 350 tons a day.

by CNB