Posted on 09/25/2001 6:51:30 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
ISTANBUL, Sept 25 (Reuters) - An Iraqi Kurdish group said on Tuesday it had been involved in heavy fighting in northern Iraq with enemies it described as Islamists with links to Afghanistan. The perceived threat from Islamist groups in northern Iraq has helped promote a process of reconciliation between the two main Kurdish groups running the enclave, which broke away from Iraqi government control after the 1991 Gulf War.
Both groups, once bitter rivals, describe the Islamist forces as "terrorists" and have vowed to cooperate against them. Further details of the "Islamist" groups were not available.
The United States, which regularly sends out air patrols over northern Iraq to enforce a no-fly zone against Baghdad's military, has long sponsored talks between the two groups, aiming to build northern Iraq into a united bulwark against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
One of the Kurdish groups, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said on Tuesday its "peshmerga" fighters had clashed with Islamist forces around the town of Halabja in the east of northern Iraq, close to the Iranian border.
"There has been some tension and clashes between the PUK and Islamic fundamentalists in a region controlled by the PUK," a senior PUK source told Reuters across the border in Turkey.
Local media reports said there had been casualties on both sides and at least two PUK fighters had died. The fighting follows weekend clashes in which more than 20 PUK guerrillas were reported by Kurdish media to have been killed.
The reports could not be independently confirmed.
Foreign observers tracking northern Iraq also said it was hard to confirm media reports that have linked the Islamist forces to Afghan-based militant Osama bin Laden, Washington's prime suspect for this month's attacks on the United States.
The PUK source declined to comment on any bin Laden link: "But we do have evidence that they have links to Afghanistan."
The leader of the second main northern Iraqi Kurdish group, Massoud Barzani, earlier in the week drew parallels between the conflict with the Islamists there and possible U.S. strikes on Afghanistan in a bid to destroy bin Laden's organisation.
"We announce that we will cooperate with all other parties, in particular the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, as we do not want Kurdistan to be a base for terrorism and terrorists," Barzani told a local assembly meeting late last week.
Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party holds the Islamist forces responsible for the killing in February of Fransu Hariria, who was governor of the city of Erbil and a senior official in the party.
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