IRBIL, Iraq - A delegation from the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee toured Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq yesterday and pledged U.S. support as part of the coalition being assembled against Saddam Hussein.
It was a bit of high-level U.S. engagement on Iraqi soil, and Kurds appeared pleased with what they heard. Borrowing from a local saying that Kurds have no friends but the mountains, Democratic Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the committee's chairman, told a special session of the Kurdish parliament that "the mountains are not your only friends."
The remark was seen as a signal of U.S. support, and Biden received a round of applause. Since Hussein's Baath Party took power in 1968, Iraq's Kurds have endured forced expulsions, mass executions and poison gas attacks.
Northern Iraq, with its overwhelming Kurdish population, is a vital area in the event of war, a possible staging ground for U.S. troops and sanctuary for Iraqi refugees. But for Kurds, thoughts of removing Hussein summon a mixture of joy and unease.
Since 1991, when the United States and Britain began enforcing a no-flight zone over much of the Kurdish region, Kurds have created a lively autonomous zone in an area outside Hussein's control. "Iraqi Kurdistan" has elections and a free press, and signs of modernism such as cellular phone networks and Internet cafes.
Should Hussein be removed from power, Kurds would likely come under a government in which they would be a minority. They worry that much of their gains could be lost. They also fear that if Hussein senses he is cornered, they would be vulnerable to attacks.
The senators toured a refugee camp and met with aid workers. The also met with widows of the village of Barzan, where troops seized thousands of boys and men in 1983; there has been no word of their fate.
Gurbut Muhammad Ahmed, whose husband was taken, pleaded, "We want to be told whether they are alive or dead."
The senators turned away questions whether Kurds might be enlisted to fight alongside U.S. troops, or about providing logistical support or chemical weapons defense for Kurds.
Though the senators encouraged Kurds to expect to be part of a central government in Iraq, they also privately made clear that U.S. support depended in part on Kurdish behavior.
A U.S. official who attended a closed dinner between the senators and senior Kurdish leaders said Biden emphasized that Kurds would participate in a united Iraq, for all ethnicities and parties, and that the two primary Kurdish parties must not fall back into the civil war they fought in the mid-1990s.
He also told them, the official said, that "Kurds have to be committed to understanding the concerns of their neighbors" - a reference to Turkey.
Turkey, a U.S. ally, worries about Kurdish ambitions in Iraq spreading to its own restive Kurdish minority. Kurds and Turks have also been sparring over the future of Kirkuk, an oil-rich city just south of the current Kurdish zone.