US Met with Kurdish Factions On Overthrow of Hussein

CAIRO, Egypt – Leaders of the two main Kurdish parties that control northern Iraq met with U.S. officials last week to coordinate efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power, according to Iraqi dissidents and Arab news media.

Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, and Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, also discussed plans for a government that would replace Hussein's regime once the Iraqi leader is ousted, the Iraqi dissidents said.

Officially, the Kurdish groups – the only armed Iraqi opposition groups – have said nothing about the meeting, perhaps out of fear of being accused by other Iraqi factions of working unilaterally with the United States.

On Sunday, the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported that Barzani and Talabani met officials from the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA in Germany last week.

Quoting a Kurdish source, the paper said both sides met for three days near Berlin and reviewed coordination "to launch a strike against Saddam most likely by the end of this year."

The Iraqi dissidents said Sunday that Barzani and Talabani also discussed with U.S. officials plans for merging their two governments ahead of a possible move against Saddam.

German Foreign Ministry spokesman Andreas Michaelis confirmed yesterday that the two Kurdish leaders were in Germany last week but declined to provide further information.

A spokeswoman at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin said the United States never comments on intelligence matters.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad yesterday, Hussein called on Arab oil exporters to stop sales to the United States and Israel as well as cut their exports in half.

The Iraqi president spoke in a national television address less than a month after he announced that he was cutting off Iraq's oil exports for 30 days or until Israel withdraws from Palestinian territories, an announcement that triggered an immediate increase in world oil prices. He reiterated his call for other Arab oil producers to join his embargo "in solidarity with their Arab brothers in Palestine."

"Oil is not a tank, it's not an aircraft, but it can be used as a weapon," he said.

Other Arab countries refused to follow his lead earlier, and they were unlikely to heed his call yesterday. He said Arabs should "immediately decrease the production of their oil for export by 50 percent and ... deprive the U.S. and Zionist entity of the other exported half."