Ankara (Reuters) - An Iraqi Kurdish leader said yesterday an attack by
President Saddam Hussein's troops on the Kurdish-held north would
lead to civil war in the Kurdish region. Jalal Talabani said up to
50,000
Iraqi government soldiers were stationed on the edge of the
mountainous Kurdish enclave which broke away from Baghdad's rule
after the 1991 Gulf War, poised with a prepared plan of attack.

"In our area facing us are three Iraqi army corps," Talabani told
Reuters
in an interview during a visit to Turkey. "Altogether there are about
15
divisions facing us, besides some forces from the Republican Guards."

With the help of joint U.S.-British air patrols enforcing a no-fly zone
over
most of the breakaway region, Talabani said his lightly armed Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK) "peshemerga" fighters were determined to
face any threat.

"They know that we will resist and this will lead to a new civil war in
Iraqi
Kurdistan," he said.  "Perhaps they will succeed in occupying this or
that town, but the area will turn to a field for partisan war."

Iraq's restive Kurds rose up against Baghdad during the Gulf War, but
an
offensive by government troops forced hundreds of thousands of Kurds
to flee through the mountains. Kurdish peshmergas backed by allied air
power later succeeded in wresting the area from Baghdad's grip.

Intermittent fighting which then broke out between the PUK and the
rival
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani culminated in
1996 when the KDP, backed by Baghdad's forces overran Talabani's
capital, Sulaymaniyah.

A U.S.-brokered ceasefire followed in 1997. Western diplomats said they
had warned the feuding Kurds they would not come to their aid if they
persisted in their internecine war. "Now we have no war, we have peace
in Kurdistan. This will not give any pretext for the (Iraqi) regime to
attack
us," said Talabani during his visit to Turkey, which hosts the
U.S.-British
Operation Northern Watch air patrols.

He said Shi'ite rebels in the south of Iraq would also seize the
opportunity of unrest in the Kurdish areas to step up their struggle
against the Iraqi government. "Also I think the morale of the Iraqi
army is
not so high as to use it in a such a risky adventure," he said.

Talabani criticised Washington. "I don't think the Americans have a
plan
to remove Saddam," he said. "There is no plan. The Americans want to
see Saddam Hussein ousted, but they have no plan to implement it, so
how can they ask the Kurds to participate in it?"

Instead, the greying Talabani, who has championed Kurdish nationalism
since the 1960s, said the Iraqi government would collapse from within.
"We don't think the Iraqi regime is ready for any kind of democratic
change," he said.

"They are still continuing their dictatorship, they are still
continuing their
ethnic cleansing policies towards the Kurds and Turcomans." "I think
there a lot of problems facing the regime and a lot of contradictions,
and
because the regime cannot solve these problems and contradictions, the
regime will collapse."