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

DATE: SUNDAY, April 21, 1991                   TAG: 9104210234
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: SILOPI, TURKEY                                LENGTH: Medium

MARINES BEGIN IN IRAQ/ BAGHDAD MAKES OFFERS TO KURDS

Five hundred U.S. Marines flew into northern Iraq from this border town Saturday to secure a safe-haven zone for Iraqi Kurdish refugees, as top Kurdish leaders met in Baghdad with the Iraqi government.

Marines of the 24th Expeditionary Force, wearing camouflage grease on their faces, left Silopi by helicopter shortly after noon. By late Saturday afternoon, they had erected 12 tents inside Iraq in what is to be a camp for about 25,000 Kurds, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. plan calls for building 10-15 relief centers, tent cities in a U.S.-designated haven north of the 36th parallel in Iraq. It foresees turning over operation of the relief center to United Nations and other international organizations in a month or so.

The allied presence could reach up to 16,000 troops, military sources said.

In Baghdad, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani and three other Kurdish officials met Saturday with Iraqi officials. At this and previous meetings, the Iraqis discussed major concessions, including implementation of a 1970 autonomy plan for Iraqi Kurdistan and creation of a federal system in Iraq, according to a Kurdish spokesman.

The Kurdish delegation has been in Baghdad since Thursday for talks at President Saddam Hussein's invitation, Kurdish opposition spokesman Hoshyar Zebari said in a telephone interview from Germany. Preliminary contacts between the two sides began March 11, Zebari said.

In a meeting Saturday with Talabani, who is the Syrian-based leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and who led the Kurdish rebel forces whose attempted rebellion was crushed in late March, the Iraqis were "very serious to offer any conceivable concessions we are requesting," said Zebari. "They admitted that their policy has been wrong."

Iraqi officials have discussed with the Kurds the possibility of free elections, a free press and political pluralism in Iraq, said Zebari, a member of the Kurdish Democratic Party. Saddam's representatives also said that after its defeat in Kuwait, Iraq will not need an army as large as the million-man force it had before the Gulf War, and that it now views the concept of Arab unity as an illusion. Both statements were meant to assure the non-Arab Kurds that Baghdad will no longer seek to impose its views at gunpoint, Zebari said.

According to Zebari, the Kurdish spokesman, Iraq's tentative offers to the Kurdish delegation in Baghdad were intended to avoid further international involvement in its internal affairs.

by CNB