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US troops and US-backed Kurdish forces are moving on the northern Iraqi cities of Kirkuk and Mosul late Thursday, Pentagon officials said.
A battalion from the 173rd Airborne Brigade has reinforced US special forces and Kurdish forces in the northern Iraq city of Kirkuk, Major General Stanley McChrystal, told a Pentagon press briefing.
"The situation in Kirkuk is fluid and has been all day," McChrystal said.
"Truckload after truckload" of Kurds flooded into the city Thursday after US-backed Peshmergas entered the city without so much as a shot fired by Iraqi defenders, he said.
Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said regular Iraqi army forces have been given an opportunity to lay down their arms and surrender in Mosul.
However, the Bush administration said earlier in the day that American troops, not Kurdish forces, will take control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
"We've been in contact with officials in Turkey as well as free Iraqis in the North and I think it is fair to say that American forces will be in control of Kirkuk," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.
The move was widely regarded as a gesture to Turkey, which has warned that any bid by the Kurds to retain permanent control of Kirkuk and Mosul would be unacceptable.
The seizure of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk by US-backed Kurdish fighters and their advance on the city of Mosul has revived Turkish concerns of a Kurdish move for independence.
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Thursday that US Secretary of State Colin Powell had reassured him that US forces would remove the Kurdish fighters from Kirkuk and that new US troops would be sent shortly to the city.
Ankara has deployed troops near its border and has said it will move into northern Iraq if its interests are threatened.
Turkey wants to avoid a repeat of the bloody 15-year-long rebellion by Kurdish separatists in southeastern Turkey in which more than 30,000 people died.
(Xinhua News Agency April 11, 2003)
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