DOHUK, Iraq - As the United States and Iraq publicly spar over the degree of Iraqi compliance with U.N. weapons inspections, an array of U.S. war preparations is under way here in the independent north.
U.S. intelligence officials have been working alongside Kurdish officials in recent weeks, and recruiters for a U.S.-sponsored opposition group have been selecting candidates for a program to train scouts and translators that one day may help U.S. forces inside Iraq, according to Kurdish and Western officials.
U.S. military planners have visited secluded corners of the country to examine potential basing sites for use in a war, according to a Western analyst familiar with the activity.
No U.S. military forces are based here yet, Kurdish officials say, and recent Turkish and Arabic news reports of sizable military deployments appear unfounded.
But teams from the CIA have been working with the principal political parties in the Kurdish region - the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in the east, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the west - for upward of two months.
Kurdish officials say the Americans have interviewed members of a Muslim militant group who have been captured by Kurdish security forces, looking for links to al-Qaida. The group, Ansar al-Islam, has been waging holy war against the secular Kurdish government, with some tactical success.
Other duties of the Americans are less clear. But local officials say that after a long absence, the U.S. teams have been analyzing the political and military situation in the autonomous zone and meeting important figures. Local officials say there has been a U.S.-sponsored effort to recruit guides, civil affairs specialists and translators to work with Western forces should they enter Iraq.
Yura Mossa, chief of the minority Assyrian Democratic Party in the northwestern city of Zakho, said senior party officials met with an unspecified group of Americans and then asked local party offices to select applicants. The program, underwritten by the U.S. Congress as part of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, would provide training, perhaps in Hungary, for the recruits.
As planning goes forward, Kurdish officials worry that Saddam Hussein might use the U.S. presence as grounds for a pre-emptive strike.
"We have to be very careful," one senior official said.