War on Two Fronts.(United States, Turkey negotiate on Iraqi war)

Call it mission creep, with potentially disastrous consequences. When the Pentagon first proposed launching a major U.S. assault on Saddam Hussein from Turkey, Ankara countered with a scenario of its own. To cope with an anticipated wave of refugees from northern Iraq, the Turks suggested sending in their own "peacekeeping force," along with the Americans, to establish a secure buffer zone along their southern border.

Nearly two months of hard negotiation later, the United States is close to securing permission to deploy an invasion force of roughly 47,000 troops in Turkey. But NEWSWEEK has learned that Turkey has considerably raised its price. Ankara now says it will let U.S. troops pass through its territory only if an even larger number of Turkish troops, between 60,000 and 80,000, go in as well--and not just within a relatively narrow border zone. The new mission, according to sources close to the Turkish military, is to occupy "strategic positions" within a "security arc" reaching as far as 220 to 270 kilometers into Iraq. That's nearly the whole of Iraqi Kurdistan.

If so, this could spell serious trouble for the United States. Kurdish groups that have enjoyed de facto independence from Saddam's rule in northern Iraq strenuously oppose any Turkish military presence in the region. If it happens, in fact, Kurdish separatist groups inside Turkey are already threatening to resume the terrorist campaign they waged in the early '90s, killing 30,000 people. This poses an acute dilemma for Washington. Pressed by its timetable for war, the United States is inclined to agree to Turkish demands. If it does not, there may be no northern front. But the price will be the extra headache of trying to defuse tensions between the Turks and the Iraqi Kurds. Failing could mean a Turkish-Kurdish war breaking out behind U.S. lines.

The Turks' concerns are equally clear. It's not just a flood of refugees that scares them--half a million in 1991. More, they want to prevent Iraq's Kurds from taking advantage of a U.S. invasion to declare independence from Baghdad and possibly seize the nearby Iraqi oilfields of Kirkuk and Mosul. Ankara also seeks to ensure that the rights of ethnic Turkomans living in Kurdistan are respected in a post- Saddam Iraq. "If you want to prevent massacres and the division of Iraq," says Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, "you have to take some precautions."

Iraq's Kurds don't see it that way, however. Sabah Mustafa Mohammed, a Kurdish peshmerga, or irregular soldier, fought Saddam and is now ready to fight the Turks, if ordered. A small Turkish military contingent has already been sent to Iraq, chiefly to keep an eye on suspected terrorists. One of the Turkish bases lies inside Iraqi territory not far from Mohammed's home village of Zewa, a sleepy, snowy one-road town with no electricity and a single dry-goods shop 25 kilometers south of the border. "These Turks should go home," he says, decked out in a black and white checked kaffiyeh and camouflage jacket. "For us, the Turks and Saddam are the same. They are both enemies of the Kurds."

For now, Iraqi Kurd leaders are being a little more diplomatic--but only a little. "We will refuse [Turkish intervention]," says Sami Abdul Rahman, 70, the deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controls northern Kurdistan. The party's representative in Washington, Farhad Barzani, is no less categorical. "We have told them: the Americans comes as ...