Barham Salih  To Conslut With U.S. Officials On Terror Groups in Kurdistan

Iraqi Kurds Brace for U.S. Attack 

Oct 2, 2001

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Nervous Iraqi Kurds are stockpiling food and gasoline in fear that
the United States will attack Saddam Hussein in the campaign against terrorism.

The group has also called on Washington to help wipe out the Jund al-Islam, an Islamic
extremist group the Kurds say Osama bin Laden is behind.

``A terrorist network is trying to destroy part of Iraqi Kurdistan,'' said Barham Salih, a
leading figure in the autonomous Kurdish area of Iraq. ``I am looking for help from every
quarter we can get it. I am hoping that the world will not be indifferent to this situation.''

He said the Jund al-Islam was a creation of bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind holed up in
Afghanistan and held responsible for the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and at the
Pentagon.

Salih, a key figure in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the PUK, travels to Washington
Wednesday to consult with U.S. officials about the expected attacks on terror groups in the
Middle East and Central Asia.

He said he would ask State Department and National Security Council officials for aid in the
PUK's fight against the Islamic group Jund al-Islam.

Part of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq is ruled by PUK rival, the Kurdistan Democratic
Party. Both organizations have large, well-armed militias and are regarded in Washington as
the cornerstone to a potential anti-Saddam alliance.

The United States stopped short of toppling Saddam in the 1991 Gulf War fearing, as do
U.S. allies in the region, that Saddam's absence could lead to the country's disintegration
along ethnic lines, with a powerful Kurdish north and a Shiite south that might align with
Shiite Iran.

Gasoline prices in northern Iraq have gone up 25 percent as people hoard supplies and Iraq
has cut back on sales to Turkish truckers who normally deliver supplies in the Kurdish
region.

Nizar Hasimoglu, a Turkish driver, said Tuesday he has not been able to travel to Iraq since
Sept. 18 when Iraq halted sales. A police officer at the border said Tuesday that only 30
trucks carrying crude oil from Iraq crossed the border on Tuesday, down from a high of 600
a day earlier this year.
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