By Jim Hoagland

Sunday, September 29 1996; Page C07 The Washington Post

The two pillars of the Clinton administration's Middle East policy are crumbling at nearly the same time, and for many of the same reasons. Chief among them is the administration's growing inability to tell the world -- and itself -- the truth about inconvenient change in that volatile region.

The horrific explosion of Israeli-Pal\estinian violence last week is not directly linked to Saddam Hussein's armed conquest of northern Iraq 30 days ago. But the moral and intellectual lameness the administration demonstrated in responding to unexpected events in Iraq is mirrored in its initial response to the eruption of new hatred and killing in Jerusalem, on the West Bank and in the Gaza strip.

In Iraq, the administration claimed an imaginary success after a strategically senseless missile raid against Saddam. U.S. initiatives on the north, once a protected haven for opposition to Saddam, have been confined to pretending that Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani is an independent agent who can be wooed back from his alliance with Saddam.

The Kurds are not important, the White House in effect says. Neither are the past U.S. policy (and promises) and the existing U.N. resolutions that Saddam's invasion of the north violated. Worse, the renewed wooing of Barzani shows an almost Carteresque belief by the Clintonites that men of good intentions can always talk things out.

In Israel, the administration is similarly pressing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to sit down as partners in peace and talk. There is scant recognition that confrontation and violence have overtaken partnership for these two and that a much more active U.S. role is now needed.

Part of the lust for proclaiming success and ignoring inconvenient truths is campaign-driven, of course. But a strategic U.S. blindness preceded both Middle East upheavals as the White House failed to adjust means and goals at vital turning points.

Last March, as a Saddam-penetrated CIA operation based in Amman was coming apart and the Kurdish factions were moving again to war footing -- events reported at the time in this column -- the State Department's Northern Gulf Affairs bureau was concluding in a classified internal analysis that its policy toward Iraq was "an unqualified success."

A major part of the success, poli\cymakers at State and the National Security Council told each other, was that Iraq had been kept off the president's desk in an election year. Their definition of success was for them to keep Saddam "in his box" and let the president concentrate on more important matters, like reelection.

But without presidential involvement the lower levels lost control over policy toward Iraq by the end of August. They were unable to get $2 million freed to pay for cease-fire monitors to defuse the Kurdish struggles and to bolster the sagging Iraqi National Congress, a group Vice President Gore and national security adviser Anthony Lake met with -- and promised to support -- in April 1993.

Saddam, who had been dealing secretly with Barzani for months and probably receiving reports through him on Washington's complacency, struck with a boldness that a distracted and inadequately briefed Clinton could not begin to match.

The most damaging part of Clinton's too-little, too-soon response in Iraq may well be the way in which he reached it.

Strategy briefings were conducted on the campaign trail in harried circumstances, usually by telephone or fax. Clinton did not return to Washington for a face-to-face meeting in the White House with his principal Cabinet officers to discuss the use of force or the difficult strategic problems of keeping the multinational coalition on Iraq solidly together. A Cabinet-level group met without him four times as the crisis escalated. Clinton left the impression of a partially engaged president who checked off the least ambitious, least risky option box on a decision list prepared by Lake.

Clinton's well-known preference to conciliate rather than confront now finds an echo in the soft approach he is taking to violence and force on two fronts in the Middle East. Weeks after he betrayed U.S. interests, Barzani is being treated as a wayward ward to be forgiven if he will now betray Saddam. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Pelletreau met with the Kurdish leader in Turkey last week. But Saddam's half brother and chief representative in Europe, Bar\zan al-Takriti said in an interview with the London based Al Hayat newspaper last week that the Barzani Kurds had returned irrevocably "to their mother's lap" and Barzani met Pelletreau as part of an effort by Saddam "to normalize relations with America."

He linked that normalization effort with new veiled threates against Kuwait, threats the United States has let pass without response.

The United States now saw that "its interests lie with Iraq," Barzan continued. "The Americans will turn 180 degrees away from Kuwait," which he accused of being drunk with "power and arrogance." He added that "danger lies ahead for Kuwait" at the hands of Iraq "if it persists in ignoring the facts."

The launching of 44 cruise missiles into the southern Iraqi desert has not deterred Saddam from renewing his war of nerves with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Self-induced blindness has made U.S. policy on Iraq a mess, not an "unqualified success." The White House's denial of this -- even to itself -- disgusts middle-level officials within the government who know what has happened.

The crisis in Israel again found Clinton on the campaign trail, being briefed by fax and phone while his aides clung desperately to policy levers of the past that no longer worked. Instead of being able to rely on a Labor government commited to reaching a long-term peace settlement with the Arabs, Washington must now react to an Israeli prime minister who disdains the peace process but has nothing to put in its place to prevent new violence, except brute force. That requires a leadership that Clinton fell woefully short of in Iraq.Kurd rebels gun down Turkish village teachers 10:02 Oct 01, 1996

HANTEPE, Turkey, Oct 1 (Reuter) - Pools of blood on the banks of the Tigris River marked the spot where four Turkish primary school teachers were shot dead on Tuesday by what police said was a Kurdish rebel hit team.

Residents in the village of Hantepe said two armed men abducted seven teachers from their state-paid lodgings overnight, took them to the nearby riverside and killed four of them in a hail of bullets.

``It was the (Kurdistan Workers Party) PKK,'' a security official told Reuters in Hantepe, a run-down southeastern village of around 100 houses in Diyarbakir province.

Two of the victims were a young married couple, villagers said. The rebels, who have often killed Turkish teachers in the past, released the three other, female, captives.

The PKK say they target teachers, most of whom are from outside the region, because they symbolise the forced assimilation of Kurdish children into Turkish culture. Teaching the Kurdish language is forbidden in Turkish schools.

Human rights group Amnesty International said in a report released on Tuesday that the rebels have killed 90 teachers since they took up arms for Kurdish self rule in 1984. More than 20,000 people have died in the bitter conflict.

``Who killed our teachers?'' an 11-year-old pupil, who identified herself as Emine, said at the place where her teachers were gunned down. Body parts lay on the ground.

``We want teachers here but after this none will come,'' she said.

Hundreds of village schools in the southeast are empty because teachers appointed from western Turkey have refused to take up their posts in fear of the rebels.

Soldiers detained around eight Hantepe residents for questioning, witnesses said.

The killing was the latest in a string of attacks near Diyarbakir, the southeast's main city, which security officials say may be organised by elusive rebel commander Semdin Sakik.

The PKK killed three private security guards and kidnapped two others at a dam around 25 km (13 miles) west of Hantepe late on Monday night, security officials said.

A group of about six rebels with a heavy machinegun and assault rifles opened fire on a cafe frequented by policemen in Maden town outside Diyarbakir on Monday night, killing two junior civil servants and wounding 17, including six policemen, officials in nearby Tunceli said.

Sakik, also known as ``Fingerless Zeki,'' is believed to have come to Diyarbakir province from northern Iraq in the last month on his way to Tunceli province.

Amnesty condemns rights abuses in Turkey 11:03 Oct 01, 1996

ISTANBUL, Oct 1 (Reuter) - Amnesty International launched a worldwide campaign on Tuesday to highlight human rights abuses in Turkey and issued a report condemning extrajudicial killings, torture and disappearances.

``This is a campaign for Turkey. This is a campaign to ensure that the necessary safeguards will be put in place to protect the rights of people in detention,'' Amnesty chief Pierre Sane told Reuters.

The European Parliament last month threatened to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in European Union aid to Turkey, complaining that Ankara had not carried out commitments to clean up its rights record.

Sane said the London-based human rights group would pressure international organisations in a bid to expose Turkey's failure to prevent torture, extrajudicial killings and the recent phenomenon of suspects ``disappearing'' in detention.

Amnesty also accused Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels and left-wing urban guerrillas of rights abuses.

Successive Turkish leaders, the judiciary and even doctors have turned a blind eye to ``gross'' abuses by the powerful security forces, Amnesty said in a report released on Tuesday.

The Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement that the report was ``biased and tendentious'' and said Turkey respected human rights in its fight against the PKK.

``The report, seeking to show the PKK as a warring party, is encouraging terrorism. With this attitude, Amnesty International has lost credibility and esteem,'' the statement said.

Sane said Amnesty was concerned most by an increase in the number of disappearances and extrajudicial executions.

More than 100 people, mostly Kurdish villagers, have ``disappeared'' in police custody since 1993 in a bitter conflict between Kurdish rebels and the security forces in southeast Turkey, the report said.

Government forces and the PKK are locked in a 12-year-old conflict in southeast Turkey. More than 20,000 people have died.

The report said more than 1,000 civilians suspected of pro-rebel activity had been killed by the security forces or shadowy death squads in the last five years ``in an unprecedented wave of extrajudicial killings.''

Amnesty says the guerrillas have killed at least 400 prisoners and civilians between 1993 and 1995 in a campaign against a pro-state Kurdish village militia.

``It is a bitter irony that...most victims of its deliberate and arbitrary killings have been Kurdish villagers,'' Amnesty said.

The group's concerns about the PKK were illustrated on Tuesday when the rebels shot dead four primary school teachers near the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, according to officials.

The rebels have killed 90 teachers in the southeast since the guerrillas took up arms in 1984 for Kurdish self rule. The PKK say it targets Turkish teachers because they help assimilate Kurds, whose language is banned from being taught in schools.

Turkey last year relaxed some of its restrictions on freedom of expression and amended the 1982 military-era constitution but the European Parliament says it has not fulfilled further reforms promised in exchange for a lucrative customs union with the EU that went into force in January.

Amnesty accused the West of not pushing NATO-member Turkey hard enough on human rights for fear of upsetting an ally in a troubled region that it promotes as a democatic, secular model for other Moslem countries.

The report criticised the West for asserting Turkey ``merits 'special understanding' including, if necessary, turning a blind eye to infringements of fundamental freedoms.''

Iraqi paper criticises economic measures in north 07:03 Oct 01, 1996

BAGHDAD, Oct 1 (Reuter) - Iraq's most influential newspaper Babel on Tuesday sharply criticised the recent economic measures taken by Baghdad in northern Iraq, blaming them for a slump in the already battered local currency.

The paper, owned by President Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday, said the government should not have lifted restrictions on trade between northern Iraq and the rest of country.

``Although the decision has nationalist and political meaning that Iraq's land is one...the checkpoints (set up by Baghdad) on the outskirts of the (Iraqi Kurdish) autonomous region...should not have been lifted,'' Babel said in a front-page editorial.

Iraq this month lifted restrictions on travel and trade with its Kurdish north following the sweeping victory by its new Kurdish ally, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) against the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

The paper said lifting the restrictions had led traders to buy dollars in order to pay for commodities sold in northern Iraq which are banned by Baghdad's government but now pass freely from the northern regions to the south.

This eventully caused the dinar to slip against the dollar, the paper said.

``After removing these checkpoints, traders have hurried to buy the dollar as a means of dealing with Kurds in northern Iraq,'' Babel said.

The dinar stood on Tuesday morning at 1,550 against the U.S. dollar. Prior to the KDP triumph it was as strong as 1,150. It has also been weakened by the delay in implementing a UN food- for-oil deal.

The economy of northern Iraq, far from the control of the central government in Baghdad, is based on cross-border trade with neighbouring Iran and Turkey.

Kurds in the north deal with Iraqi bank notes printed in Switzerland prior to the 1991 Gulf War which ejected Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Bills in circulation in the rest of the country are printed on local presses.

Each old dinar in circulation in northern Iraq is worth 43 of its post-Gulf War equivalent in other parts of the currency.

Babel also held a government decision last week to allow the sale of sweets and ice cream accountable for the falling of the dinar. It said the decision led traders to ``buy more dollars in order to import sugar and milk.''