Rival contrasting warlords hinder Iraqi Kurd peace 06:35 Oct 27, 1996

ANKARA, Oct 27 (Reuter) - Massoud Barzani is a sombre Kurdish clan chief who trusts only close friends or relatives and shies away from travelling outside his mountain fiefdom.

Fierce rival Jalal Talabani is a gregarious ex-lawyer with urbane Western tastes and a reputation as a charming, but slippery, customer.

A power struggle between them has helped derail the best chance for self-rule that the Middle East's estimated 20 million Kurds have had in decades.

Barzani and Talabani will send aides to U.S.-brokered peace talks in Turkey this week to try to end two years of intra-Kurdish clashes that have bolstered Baghdad and torn northern Iraq along partisan lines.

But analysts say the pair need to personally bury the hatchets of old blood feuds and perceived betrayals for the fledgling peace process to be a success.

``The thing can't be solved without those two meeting and making concessions,'' said Mahmud Othman, former leader of a left-wing Iraqi Kurdish party.

``There are many reasons for the conflict, going back many years but it is now becoming personalised. They have personalised it,'' he said.

Mediators are trying to persuade the two to meet and sign a peace deal if the Ankara talks go well. Any face-to-face encounter could be a tense affair.

The pair subject foreign diplomats and journalists who meet them separately to long tirades against the other.

``Is it the rivalry that has caused the conflict or the conflict that has caused the rivalry? I think the former,'' said a Western diplomat on close personal terms with both leaders.

Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) gathers much of its support from the traditionalist tribes in the far northern mountains bordering Turkey.

It sees itself as the epitome of rugged Kurdishness versus Talabani's urbanised Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a left-leaning faction based in the main city of Sulaimaniya.

Deep-rooted mistrust of Talabani led Barzani to join with Iraqi troops to take the city of Arbil from the PUK in August.

Barzani said his rival was receiving military support from neighbouring Iran. Western diplomats say Tehran does back the PUK but not to the extent that Barzani says.

These breaches of ethnic solidarity upset the Iraqi Kurds' Western sponsors but they have a precedent that is at the heart of today's Kurdish dispute.

Talabani fought with Baghdad's forces in 1966 after he split with Barzani's father Mullah Mustafa, a legendary warrior chief who first led the Iraqi Kurds' fight for autonomy.

``(Massoud) Barzani has never forgiven him for that,'' the diplomat said. ``But Talabani regards him as an upstart who can never fill his father's shoes,'' he said.

The groups worked together to run a Kurdish regional government after the Kurds broke from Baghdad with U.S. encouragement following the 1991 Gulf War.

Barzani and Talabani, who speak different dialects of the Kurdish language, maintained frosty relations in that period.

The administration, the nearest the Kurds have ever got to autonomy, fell apart after fighting broke out over tribal land rights in late 1994.

Disputes over sharing revenues and control of Arbil soon surfaced, defying U.S. peace bids. The struggle between Barzani and Talabani for Kurdish loyalties underlies the conflict.

``The problem is that we have two of them and we don't have room for two,'' Othman said. ``They are both equally culpable and stubborn,'' said British writer Sheri Laizer, author of a book on the Kurds since the Gulf War.

Talabani, 63, known to his Kurdish detractors as Rewi (The Fox) Jalal, often flirted with the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s yet kept up dialogue with the West. He has excellent contacts in Iran and most Arab capitals.

``He's a fast talker, quick on his feet, but he forgets that he's telling you the complete opposite of what he told someone else yesterday,'' Laizer said.

Talabani undiplomatically denounced U.S. peace envoy Robert Pelletreau in front of reporters for a minor gaffe and wittily parried probing journalists after talks in Ankara last week.

By contrast, 50-year-old Barzani slipped quietly in and out of a Turkish border town by road to meet the mediator. ``Barzani is someone who'd get lost in a crowd if he wasn't who he was,'' Laizer said.

Barzani dislikes flying and is wary of public attention. His critics accuse him of lacking the vision needed to stand up to such a formidable foe as Saddam. ``He is consistent, but his political and strategic outlook seem weak,'' Laizer said.