4 February 2005

1. "Rights court condemns Turkey over prisoner's shock treatment", the European Human Rights Court Thursday condemned Turkey for the torture of a prisoner subjected to electric shocks and beatings in a remand centre to make him confess to links with militant Kurdish rebels.

2. "Boiling Turkey awaits Rice in Ankara", for Turkey, US policy on now Kurdish "captured" Kirkuk and its own Kurdish rebels now nestled in north Iraq is critical.

3. "Turkey to keep secrecy veil on Ataturk's private life", Turkey has decided to keep a veil of secrecy on the letters and diaries of the wife of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk which many hoped would shed light on the stormy marriage of the nation's much-admired founding father.

4. "A Kurdish state inevitable: Barzani", a referendum carried out during last Sunday’s general election showed that 95 percent of Iraqi Kurds wanted an independent state.

5. "New Freedom in Kurdish Air", the politics of freedom is very much in the air. Kurdish parties are already hinting that they have won a victory in local council elections. And already they have begun to make noises about independence.

6. "As Iraqis Celebrate, the Kurds Hesitate", of all the remarkable things that happened at the Iraqi polls on Sunday, perhaps the most striking was pulled off by the Kurdish independence movement. Analysis by Peter W. Galbraith, a senior fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington.

1. - AFP - "Rights court condemns Turkey over prisoner's shock treatment":

STRASBOURG / 3 February 2005

The European Human Rights Court Thursday condemned Turkey for the torture of a prisoner subjected to electric shocks and beatings in a remand centre to make him confess to links with militant Kurdish rebels.

The panel ruled that Turkey had violated Article 3 of the European Human Rights Convention regarding prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment.

According to Biyan's testimony, while in police custody, his clothes had been removed and he been subjected to electric shocks, baton and cable blows and dousing with cold water.

He had complained that in order to extract a confession his captors had insulted him and threatened to kill him.

"The Court found that Mr Biyan had received his injuries as a result of his treatment in police custody," a press release said: "Noting that his injuries were consistent with ill-treatment amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment, the Court held unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 3."

The Strasbourg-based tribunal also ruled that Turkey had violated Article 6 regarding the right to a fair trial, because the state security court which had tried and convicted the applicant was not impartial and independent.

The panel rejected as implausible the Turkish government's claim that the plaintiff had deliberately inflicted injury on himself using his jacket buttons and trouser zip.

"It questioned whether it would have been possible for the applicant to inflict such injuries to various parts of his body, including his back, with the buttons and zips of his clothing," the press release said.

The court awarded Lazgin Biyan 9,000 euros (11,650 dollars) in damages and 3,000 euros in costs.

Biyan, 34, was arrested in 1997 on suspicion of membership of a secret committee providing assistance to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), now known as KONGRA-GEL.

He was later sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment for membership of an illegal organisation.

The PKK waged a 15-year war for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish eastern and southeastern parts of Turkey -- claiming more than 36,000 lives -- before announcing a unilateral ceasefire in 1999.

It is on the European Union's list of terrorist organisations. The group called off the truce in June last year, threatening to carry out attacks and warning tourists and investors to stay away from the country.

Since then, there has been a sharp increase in clashes between the rebels and Turkish government troops.

In December, Turkey was invited by the European Union to begin membership talks in October. But the country was advised that it must ensure that recent legislation adopted to improve human rights was applied at all levels.

The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.

2. - Asia Times - "Boiling Turkey awaits Rice in Ankara":

3 February 2005 / by K. Gajendra Singh*

In her scheduled whirlwind tour from February 3-10, former US national security adviser and now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will land in Ankara halfway through her safari of eight European nations: the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Turkey, Italy, France, Belgium and Luxembourg, as well as Israel and Palestine. She is due in Ankara on Saturday after talks in Berlin and Warsaw, and after meetings in Ankara she flies to Tel Aviv.

Moscow said on Tuesday that Rice would meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Ankara. US officials did not confirm the talks, but the Russian Foreign Ministry said it would prepare for US President George W Bush's talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Bratislava on February 24.

Rice will advance Bush's common agenda, in cooperation with European friends and allies, according to US Department of State spokesman Richard Boucher, who said on Monday that this included fighting terrorism, building democracy, fighting diseases such as AIDS, and cooperation around the world.

Apart from looking at new opportunities (after the election in Palestine of Abu Mazen following the death of Yasser Arafat) between the Israelis and Palestinians, she will also discuss and promote initiatives on modernization, reform and democracy in the Middle East, as embodied in the Forum for the Future, and other Group of Eight, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European outreach programs.

The third focus, Boucher said, was to support and work with European institutions. The US had always been a supporter of a united Europe, and for an active European role with the US in world affairs, he said. Rice's learning/speaking safari will, presumably, also prepare the ground for Bush's visit to Europe scheduled for February 22-25.

This could be a vital tour that will affect US policies, with worldwide implications. Since the neo-conservative-led Bush administration started beating the war drums against Iraq more than two years ago, major policy differences have emerged between the US and Europe. Since then, they have mostly talked at each other. This is an opportunity for the US to listen.

Rice's understanding of history, apart from that of a decaying and dead Soviet Union, and diplomatic skills will be tested in the European capitals, where she will have to assess the mood in the wake of four more years of Bush in the White House, and whether the so-called "successful polls in Iraq" provide a rationale for policy change, especially in France and Germany.

European officials might like to put the tensions of the past four years behind them, but there are potential areas of conflict, notably over how to handle Iran's nuclear ambitions. Europe still recalls Vice President Dick Cheney's recent statement that Israel might feel compelled to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. A number of key European allies have begun withdrawing troops from Iraq, though during Cheney's visit to Poland last week the Poles agreed to withdraw only 700 troops and defer a decision on the remaining 1,700. While the US has chosen not to make an issue of the departures, there is now strong internal pressure on European allies for troop withdrawal from the killing fields of Iraq now that the first phase of the elections is over. US officials are also fuming that the European Union could soon lift its arms embargo imposed on China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, never mind the code of conduct on exports.

"Ms Rice's get-acquainted tour comes at a time when relations with some of America's oldest and most reliable allies - angered by the US invasion of Iraq - are 'scraping the bottom'," said Senator Joseph Biden. But John Hulsman, an expert on Europe at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the trip "is as close to stretching out a hand as the Europeans can hope to get" from the Bush administration.

To guard against any euphoria being raided by the visit, Rice told the media not to expect any major shift on Iraq from the Europeans. But she said there is a "steady evolution of help to the Iraqis", noting that the Europeans have agreed to forgive much of Iraq's debt and Germany has trained Iraqi policemen. But there is a new tension in relations with Russia. Rice warned Russia that it must accelerate its democratic reforms to deepen its relationship with the US truly. She said Washington had to balance cooperation with Moscow on several fronts with the Kremlin's "uneven" moves toward democracy. The US is far from happy at the reported sale of sophisticated Russian missiles to Syria.

Not much Turkish delight

Ankara will be keen to learn how the US will handle the Iraq mess in all its aspects, and its allies in the region, and its policies regarding Iran and Syria. Or will it be business as usual? For Turkey, US policy on now Kurdish "captured" Kirkuk and its own Kurdish rebels now nestled in north Iraq is critical. For any action in the region, Turkey's support is vital for US plans, including an honorable exit from the Iraqi quagmire.

Turkey's cup of anger at US policies in the region has been boiling for some time. A blunt man, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized US policy for not stopping Kurdish attempts to dominate the ethnically divided strategic city of Kirkuk. Erdogan said Bush had assured him that he would look into the issue of massive Kurdish migration to Kirkuk, but to date that had not been done.

The Turkish Daily News in Ankara wrote, "Tension over elections in the disputed Iraqi city of Kirkuk appears to be presenting a new test for the strained ties with the United States." To soothe Turkish anger, Douglas J Feith, the neo-conservative US under secretary of defense for policy, said in Ankara that Iraq's territorial integrity was still a priority for the US. "It is crucial that Iraq's territorial integrity is preserved," he said after talks with Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.

In a statement after the Iraqi poll, the Turkish Foreign Ministry announced that the results, especially those pertaining to Kirkuk, would be assessed when announced officially. Turkey had warned the United Nations and the US of the destabilizing effects of the tensions in Kirkuk, which could spark a civil war in Iraq should Kurds demand autonomy.

While speaking in parliament, Erdogan indirectly accused the US a few days ago of ignoring "certain developments [in Iraq] which our nation has deeply regretted". "Forces who say they came to the region to bring democracy have preferred to remain indifferent to anti-democratic ambitions," he said. His remarks are part of a rising crescendo of warnings and complaints by Ankara at what it sees as attempts by Iraqi Kurds to take control of the ethnically volatile city of Kirkuk at the expense of local Arabs and Turkey's ethnic cousins, the Turkmens.

"Let me say once again clearly that any step taken without consideration for Turkey's rights will yield no result other than fanning the fire in the region," Erdogan concluded. Gul warned on Monday that Turkey could take action if ethnic unrest erupted in Kirkuk.

In response, Feith said that Iraq's unity remained a "top priority" because "preserving Iraq's territorial integrity is a key to the stability and peace of the region. We've had some differences over Iraq and many differences have caused problems ... but problems are not that unusual in an alliance of free countries. We have a useful, strong, deeply rooted alliance with Turkey and it will continue. We've got enough momentum, we've got enough good will, we've got enough common interest to be able to keep the alliance healthy despite the problems. But it does require people having understanding of the whole picture and not losing perspective."

Feith confirmed that the US was seeking continued use of the Incirlik military base in the southern Turkish province of Adana as a logistical cargo hub for US forces operating in the region. "We are interested in talking with Turkey about that and see if there is a sensible arrangement that we can both agree to," he said. The base was used by US and British warplanes to patrol a no-fly zone over northern Iraq prior to the invasion.

The Kirkuk dispute and other problems of Turkey's concern should be "resolved in a way that strengthens the integrity of Iraq", Feith told a news conference on Tuesday at the end of a two-day visit. The Kirkuk dispute is also expected to be at the top of the agenda during talks with Rice.

Feith's conciliatory tone was quite a change from that of another neo-conservative, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who lectured and castigated the Turks soon after the "quick victory" of the US war machine over Iraq in 2003. But he was given back as good by angry Turks.

Decline in US-Turkish relations

Differences in strategic interests and perceptions between NATO allies the US and Turkey emerged soon after the Soviet Union unraveled in the early 1990s. Turkey's historical enemy was confined within the new borders of the Russian federation, with not even a direct land border between them. The US also did not need that desperately an aircraft carrier (Turkey) south of the former USSR. In fact, Turkey used its friend Israel to act as a broker with the US.

But September 11 changed everything, with the chasm between the US and the Islamic world widening, beginning with the attack on Afghanistan in late 2001. An upsurge of religion all over the world helped a marginal religious party in Turkey to rise. Its younger leadership under Erdogan moderated its policies to emerge as the Justice and Development Party (AKP). It stunned everyone by gaining two-thirds of the seats in the Turkish parliament in November 2002 elections.

The differences between Ankara and Washington became acute when the US finally invaded Iraq, despite international opposition, in March 2003. These differences were first brought into sharp focus when earlier the Turkish parliament refused a US request to allow its forces to open a second front into north Iraq from Turkish territory. Tensions between them have since led to warnings and embarrassing incidents, such as the acrimonious exchange of words in July 2003 after the arrest and imprisonment of 11 Turkish commandos in north Kurdish Iraq, for which Washington expressed "regret".

In September 2004, differences erupted publicly again over US attacks on the Turkmens in northern Iraq. Gul warned that if the US did not cease its attacks on Tal Afar, a Turkmen city at the junction of Turkey, Iraq and Syria, Ankara might withdraw its support to the US in Iraq.

However unsatisfactory its accord with the EU, Turkey is drifting away from the US. Soon US-EU relations will affect US-Turkish relations too. Turkey opens talks in October on EU membership. "Turkish-EU relations are at an all-time best," said Omer Taspinar, director of the Turkey Program at the Brookings Institute, "while trans-Atlantic relations are going through one of their worst patches." Mark Parris, a former US ambassador to Turkey, said that as EU accession talks progress, a shift away from the US might widen. "Turkey's imagination, its talent, is inevitably going to be drawn toward Europe," Parris lamented.

After the Iraq war, 83% of Turks viewed the US unfavorably, up from 55% in 2002. A June 2003 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 71% of Turks worried that the US was a potential military threat.

"Turkey is at the receiving end of America's grand designs in the Middle East," said Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations at Bilgi University in Istanbul. As a neighbor of Iran, Iraq and Syria, the Turks would like a voice in US policy in the region. The invasion of Iraq "simply has broken the back of US-Turkish relations", added Taspinar. The US-Turkish relationship will depend on how the situation in Iraq, particularly northern Iraq, evolves. It might not lead to a clash of arms, but it forms the background for a thriller.

Despite promises and assurances, the US has done nothing to weed out cadres of the outlawed Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) taking refuge in north Iraq. "The PKK is the thorn in Turkey's foot, and it needs to be taken out," said an expert, adding, "There's no other way to move forward on US-Turkish relations." Preston Hughes, a retired US Army colonel and Turkey expert, said the US approach on the PKK "has caused bitter frustration and even anger at the highest levels" in Turkey.

Turkey is rightly worried that Iraqi Kurds, emboldened by their recent election performance and with a decade long experience of near-autonomy, could declare, if not independence, full autonomy, especially if there is continued confusion and chaos in Baghdad.

Many Turks believe that some in the Bush administration may not try to block an independent Kurdistan, especially if the whole Iraq misadventure unravels. Israelis have already conveyed this assessment to the Americans, according to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. While a "solution" of Iraq breaking into three parts (Kurdish, Sunni and Shi'ite) has been openly discussed as a possibility in US media and think-tanks, it has been whispered that Israel might not be averse to an independent Kurdistan, with US acquiescence, if not support. Turkey has asked Israel to keep its hands off Kurdish northern Iraq, where it was training peshmargas (paramilitaries) for operations against neighboring countries, especially Iran and Syria.

If Kurds take over Kirkuk, which sits atop billions of barrels of oil, then some experts believe that Turkey might make a go at it alone in northern Iraq, or if there is a civil war centered on Kirkuk between the Kurds, the Arabs and the Turkmens. Turks are also worried about neighboring Iran. Every other day someone or another in the US talks about a US or Israeli attack on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities. What a mess it would then to add to Turkey's doorstep in the east.

Clearly, there is a lot of interest in Rice revealing what is cooking in Bush's mind, which she reportedly knows best and understands. And Rice might wonder in turn what both historical enemies have been cooking during the frequent meetings between Erdogan and Putin. Or for that matter the new overtures to the mullahs of Tehran, another historical enemy. Turkey has also not protested at the reported sale of Russian missiles to Damascus, another enemy which Ankara threatened to invade as recently as 1999.

* K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies and editorial adviser with global geopolitics website Eurasia Research Center, USA. E-mail: Gajendrak@hotmail.com.

3. - AFP - "Turkey to keep secrecy veil on Ataturk's private life":

ANKARA / 3 February 2005

Turkey has decided to keep a veil of secrecy on the letters and diaries of the wife of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk which many hoped would shed light on the stormy marriage of the nation's much-admired founding father.

A debate on whether the private documents of the enigmatic Latife Usakligil should be made public has been raging for several weeks as a 1980 court order banning their release expired.

The head of the Turkish History Foundation said Thursday that Usakligil's family had demanded that the writings continue to be kept secret.

"The issue is over. It is impossible for us now to release them," Yusuf Halacoglu told Anatolia news agency.

Usakligil observed a strict vow of silence on her short-lived marriage with Ataturk until she died away from the public eye in 1975, five decades after the couple's wrenching divorce and 37 years after Ataturk's death.

Scant information on their marriage has come from the memoirs of Ataturk's aides, in which Usakligil, then in her 20s, is depicted as a bossy and quarrelsome woman frustrated with her husband's drinking habit and the invasion of their private life by his comrades.

According to the accounts, she would chide the nation's leader in the presence of others and stamp her feet in fits of anger as Ataturk hosted aides at dinners stretching until the small hours.

An exasperated Ataturk, 20 years her elder, decided unilaterally on the divorce, about two years after the the couple had married.

Ironically, the western-educated multi-lingual Usakligil is said to have inspired many of the reforms that Ataturk undertook to free women from the grip of patriarchal traditions.

Ataturk is idolized by millions of Turks as the far-sighted man who founded modern Turkey on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and transformed it, with an iron fist, into a strictly secular republic which has come closer to the West than any other Muslim nation.

Those who opposed the release of Usakligil's writings argued that details of Ataturk's private life might tarnage his image and be manipulated by Islamist-minded opponents of his reforms.

"No one in this country will have the power to make media monkeys out of Latife and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk," columnist Emin Colasan wrote in the daily Hurriyet Thursday.

4. - NTV / MSNBC - "A Kurdish state inevitable: Barzani":

A referendum carried out during last Sunday’s general election showed that 95 percent of Iraqi Kurds wanted an independent state.

3 February 2005

While it may not happen in the immediate future, the founding of an independent Kurdish state in Northern Iraq was inevitable, the leader of the largest Iraqi Kurdish faction has said.

Masoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party said that there was overwhelming support for the founding of a Kurdish state in Northern Iraq. This was backed up by the results of a referendum held in conjunction with last Sunday’s Iraqi general election, with 95 percent of respondents voting in favour of the proposal.

“An independent Kurdish state will become true at the right time,” Barzani said.

However, there have been allegations of widespread electoral abuses in the referendum, with claims that many of the 1,900,000 Kurds who voted cast more than one ballot and that even children took part in the voting.

5. - IPS - "New Freedom in Kurdish Air":

KIRKUK / 3 February 2005 / by Aaron Glantz

Two members of Kurdish parties are touring a soccer stadium turned refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Iraq's northern oil-rich city Kirkuk on a sunny morning. They are carrying a petition asking Kurds whether they want ethnic federalism in Iraq or Kurdish independence.

The politics of freedom is very much in the air. Kurdish parties are already hinting that they have won a victory in local council elections. And already they have begun to make noises about independence.

Ahmed Hassen Aziz, like everyone else in the camp, wants an independent Kurdistan.

"I feel that Kurds were under oppression," he said, "and I felt the discrimination of the former regime. Now I'm stamping my hand for Kurdistan. This way we will reach our potential and have all our rights as Kurds in independent Kurdistan."

This is the third time since the start of the U.S. occupation about two years ago that Kurds have launched a petition drive for independence. On the other two occasions, more than 1.5 million Kurds stamped their thumb-print to separate from Iraq, but the impact on overall political dynamics was minimal.

This time, however, the situation is different. Because Kurdish refugees were allowed to vote in last weekend's election, Kurds were doubtless able to carry a strong majority of the vote.

Now, the local government plans to organise a referendum on inclusion of oil-rich Kirkuk under the authority of Iraqi Kurdistan -- a move bitterly opposed by the city's Arab population, which boycotted the election in protest.

Sunni Arabs are not the only people worried. "Federalism is dangerous," says Sheikh Ahmed el-Ami who heads the office of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Kirkuk. "If Kurds get their independence, it will destroy Iraq."

The Sheikh spells out what that could mean. "If they take their independence, then I will have to ask for independence for the Shia in the south," he says. "The Sunnis will want to separate. We will even have to have very small countries for Assyrian Christians and Yazeedis (an old ethnic group)."

Arabs in Kirkuk have reason to worry. A major part of the Kurdish programme is the transfer of Arabs to the south of Iraq. Many Arabs came to Kirkuk in the north during Saddam Hussein's rule. Kurds now want them to "go back to their original place" to make room for Kurdish refugees who are returning to their original place.

But Arabs do not want to go, says Sheikh Ahmed al-Ami. He was not sure whether the move would provoke armed resistance to the Kurdish plans.

"God only knows what will happen," he said.. "We know that for every action there is a reaction, but we don't know what will happen yet. It's up to the Kurds."

Elsewhere in Kirkuk, citizens go about their lives indifferent to the political machinations around them.

"We need a new life," Turkomen shopkeeper Ardu Abu Zeinab says amidst nods from his customers (Turkomens are northern Iraqis of Turkish origin). "During the 35-year rule of Ba'ath, Saddam was crushing our human rights here. Now it's no problem for us who rules -- Kurds or Turks or Arabs. We need water. We need electricity. We need someone to take care of our basic human needs."

6. - The New York Times - "As Iraqis Celebrate, the Kurds Hesitate":

ERBIL / 2 February 2005 / by Peter W. Galbraith*

OF all the remarkable things that happened at the Iraqi polls on Sunday, perhaps the most striking was pulled off by the Kurdish independence movement. With almost no advance notice, hundreds of Kurds erected tents at official polling places in Iraq's Kurdish areas and asked those emerging from the ballot booths to take part in an informal referendum on whether Kurdistan should be independent or part of Iraq. From what I saw, almost everyone stopped to vote in the referendum, and the tally was running 11 to 1 in favor of independence.

This news will not be welcomed by American and British officials, who have studiously ignored the Kurdish independence movement, pretending that the unity of Iraq is not at issue in the country's transition to democracy. Those who organized the independence referendum - mostly representatives of Kurdish nongovernmental organizations - had sought a meeting last February with the American administrator in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer III, to show him their petition with 1.7 million signatures asking for a vote on independence. Neither Mr. Bremer nor his main deputies would see the group. Thus the actual voting on Sunday caught coalition officials by surprise - in part because Kurdistan, strongly supportive of the American presence in Iraq, has not been a priority for our diplomacy.

United States officials have preferred to see Kurdistan through their own lenses. Last summer, I heard Condoleezza Rice speak at a meeting in Washington about how impressed she was with the Kurdish commitment to the building a new, unified Iraq. I know every Kurdish leader she met with, and I know that none of them would prefer to be an Iraqi if an independent Kurdistan were a realistic option.

Kurdish leaders, well aware of the practical impediments to independence, repeat a mantra that the Americans want to hear: Iraq should be democratic, federal, pluralistic and united. But their hearts are not in it. As Massoud Barzani, leader of one of the two major Kurdish political groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, said at an Election Day news conference in his mountaintop headquarters nearby at Salaheddin, "I am certain there will be an independent Kurdistan, and I hope to see it in my lifetime."

While the Kurdistan Regional Government maintains that the referendum was entirely a private initiative, the voting was greatly facilitated by a younger generation of officials, who believe their elders have already made too many concessions to the unity of Iraq. With a wink from the government, election officials at many locations permitted the independence movement to distribute referendum ballots inside the polling places.

Iraq's new Assembly will face the task of preparing a constitution for a country where a sizable part of the population almost unanimously does not want to be part of the whole. The representatives of the Kurdish areas will most likely be the second-largest bloc in the Parliament. They will not press for independence any time soon, but they will be mindful of the referendum vote. A second election is scheduled for the end of this year, and it is quite possible that the referendum movement will convert itself into a political party by then if it feels that the major Kurdish parties have made too many concessions.

The Kurdish region today functions as if it were an independent state. The Kurdistan Regional Government carries out virtually all government functions, and Baghdad law applies only to the extent the Kurdish Parliament chooses to apply it. Kurdistan is responsible for its own security (which is the main reason it has been free of the violence wracking the rest of Iraq) and maintains its own armed forces.

For the people of Kurdistan, the issue is not simply a matter of keeping what they have. What drives the move for independence is not just the love of Kurdistan but also a widespread antipathy toward Iraq. The Iraqi flag is a hated symbol of a brutal regime, and it is still banned in areas controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (it does fly, along with the Kurdistan flag, on a few public buildings elsewhere in the region).

The Kurds do not allow Arab units of the new Iraqi military onto their territory, nor do they permit Baghdad ministries to open offices. They refuse to surrender control of their international borders to Baghdad for fear that the central government will cut off their precious access to the outside world.

As the Assembly draws up the new constitution, Kurdish leaders likely will settle for a deal that preserves their region's de facto independence and financial autonomy and gives them control over the disputed province of Kirkuk. Especially important, the Kurds insist on a fixed percentage of Iraq's budget and full control over Kurdistan's petroleum, including the right to export it.

Kurdish dreams of independence have long been thwarted by the hostility not only of Arab Iraqis but also of Turkey, Iran and Syria - each of which have substantial Kurdish minorities. These neighbors will be alarmed by the results of the independence referendum. Wiser heads, especially in Turkey, now see a loose Iraqi federation as by far the lesser evil than a Kurdish state.

The United States would do well to learn the lessons of the former Yugoslavia, where policymakers denied the reality of breakup until it was too late to contain the accompanying violence. Just four days before Yugoslavia's wars began in June 1991, the American Secretary of State, James Baker, was in Belgrade focused on the impossible task of stopping Slovenian and Croatian secession when he should have been trying to prevent the shooting.

A dying Yugoslavia was a different situation than a nascent Iraq, to be sure. But the question remains: will Kurdistan want to stay in an Iraqi federation - even a very loose one? As the United States learned in Yugoslavia, it is hard in a democracy to hold people in a country they hate. The Kurds' demand for independence is not an immediate crisis, but it is a coming one.

* Peter W. Galbraith, a former United States ambassador to Croatia, is a senior fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington.