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Iraqi Kurds eye advance from the north with concern

Lieutenant Massoud Rushdi likes to spend Newroz, the Kurdish new year, picnicking with his family in the brilliant green hills outside Zakho.

Friday was different. Massoud's wife and two sons packed clothes and food into their truck and left town.

It was not fear of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's weapons, but the knowledge that Turkish tanks could soon come thundering across the bridge over the Zakho river and crush the Iraqi Kurds' 12-year experiment in self-rule.

"We decided that it was not safe for them to stay," said Massoud, a recent graduate from the Zakho military academy.

The prospect of a large Turkish incursion into the Kurdish autonomous areas has been occupying senior Washington officials as they seek to persuade Ankara to open up its airspace for US jets.

Citing anxieties about a flood of refugees, the safety of Iraq's Turkmen population, the risk of attacks by Turkish-Kurd separatists hiding in Iraqi territory, and above all the need to keep Iraqi Kurds in check, Ankara seems bent on entering an area it has long viewed as its own back yard.

The Kurds of Zakho are preparing to resist.

"We don't want to be liberated from Saddam only to be oppressed by Turkey," said Ahmed Barmani, a car mechanic. "I hate Turkey more than I do Saddam."

Barmani was not alone. Several hundred peshmerga (meaning those who face death), from the villages around Zakho, could be seen taking up positions in the hills.

There is little the lightly armed fighters could do to stop the Turks, NATO's second largest army.

But Babekir Zebari, regional commander of the Kurdish military forces, said life would be made very difficult for Turkey if it tried to occupy the self-rule area.

Zebari said his forces are ready and willing but will almost certainly not take part in front-line fighting.

"The reason we back the Americans is because we want to protect our liberty, despite the fact that we were betrayed by them in the past. But we would like to show America what being an ally is all about."
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