Two Kurdish fighters of the KDP stand guard next to a covered anti-aircraft gun some outside of Duhok

DOHUK, Iraq, December 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - With Washington and Baghdad at loggerheads over the degree of Iraqi compliance with U.N. inspections, more American war preparations are under way in northern Iraq, reported a leading U.S. news paper Sunday, December 22.

American intelligence officials have been working alongside Kurdish officials in recent weeks, and recruiters for an American-sponsored opposition group have been selecting candidates for a program to train scouts and translators that one day may help American forces inside Iraq, the New York Times quoted Kurdish and Western officials as saying.

American military planners have visited secluded corners of the country to examine potential basing sites for use in a war, according to a Western expert familiar with the activity.

No American military forces are based here yet, Kurdish officials said, claiming that recent Turkish and Arabic news reports of sizable military deployments were unfounded.

But teams from the Central Intelligence Agency have been working with the principal political parties in the Kurdish region - the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in the east, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the west - for upward of two months.

The CIA teams have become a familiar sight for Kurds, who see them traveling in convoys with armed local guards.

One team appeared Thursday, December 20, at the local supermarket in Ohuk, arriving as a New York Times photographer stepped outside with his purchases.

The Americans were accompanied by Kurdish gunmen who wore the distinctive red-and-white headdress of the Barzanis, the ruling clan in the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Kurdish officials say the Americans have interviewed members of a Muslim group who have been captured by Kurdish security forces, looking for links to Al Qaeda.

The group, Ansar Al-Islam, has been waging war against the secular Kurdish government, with some tactical success.

Other duties of the Americans are less clear.

But local officials say that after a long absence, the American teams have been analyzing the political and military situation in the autonomous zone and meeting important figures, deepening Washington's understanding of the region.

According to the paper, the CIA agents are also building relationships that would be valuable if the United States leads a war against Iraq and later occupies this "historically unstable land".

The northern zone is ringed by neighbors - Iran, Turkey and Syria - that express deep misgivings over the intensifying Western involvement with the Kurds.

Local officials say that apart from the CIA presence, there has been American effort to recruit guides, civil affairs specialists and translators to work with Western forces should they invade Iraq.

Yura Mossa, chief of the minority Assyrian Democratic Party in the northwestern city of Zakho, said senior party officials had met with an unspecified group of Americans and then had asked local party offices to select applicants.

The program, underwritten by the United States Congress as part of Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, would provide training, perhaps in Hungary, for the recruits.

"We have registered some names, and we have told them we are ready to register some other names, and to send young people to help America," Mossa said.

"In the case of ousting Saddam Hussein, all the people of Iraq - Kurds, Assyrian, Arabs - will be ready to help," he claimed.

Mossa said that none of the men his office had signed up had departed for training and that they were awaiting further instructions.

A similar effort has occurred in Sulaimaniya, where a former head of the Iraqi Communist Party has been registering names and circulating a questionnaire as a sort of job application.

His activities have been reported in the local media and in The Christian Science Monitor, and have angered Kurdish political parties.

"He is a clown," one Kurdish official said.

"He had no local reputation and no money, and all of a sudden he has a new office and an Internet connection, and he's handing out these letters. The Americans should not work with him."

A Western expert familiar with the region said the recruiting was coordinated by the Iraq National Congress, an opposition group based in London, and was unrelated to the CIA teams here.

That led a Kurdish official to say that American government agencies often seem split in their agendas, and that sometimes it was not possible to determine the direction and shape of American policy.

Kurds remember engagements with the United States that ended in what they consider betrayal.

The United States encouraged Kurdish uprisings in 1975 and 1991, then withheld support while local guerrillas were routed.

An American-encouraged coup attempt against Saddam in 1996 also ended badly.

As planning goes forward, Kurdish officials worry that Saddam might use the American presence as grounds for a pre-emptive strike. Several Kurdish cities are within artillery range of the Iraqi Army.

"We have to be very careful," a senior official said.

"If there are people who want to overthrow Saddam Hussein, we do not want to be too far from them. But we do not want to provoke Saddam Hussein in any way.

"We know him, and we are responsible for our people, and must be very careful about what we say and do."

The sense of uncertainty deepened this week, when Turkish and Arab media reported that 50 military trucks entered Iraq at the border crossing near Zakho, ferrying American troops and equipment into village bases.

Some reports said American soldiers were improving airfields in anticipation of war.

Turkish military officials and Western diplomats claimed the reports were false.

"Until now I have not seen these military trucks," said Akher Shekh Jamal, Zakho's mayor.

"If American troops came to Kurdistan, we would see them. We would have witnesses."

A Western expert said military activity had been limited to surveys of airfields some weeks ago by American planners near the villages of Bamarni and Harir in northern Iraq. Tours of northern villages appeared to confirm a low level of activity.

The Turkish Army has operated inside northern Iraq since the late 1990's, under an agreement with the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

The deployments are part of the army's counter-insurgency against the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which has engaged in a long campaign for Kurdish rights in Turkey.

With their armored vehicles, including American-made M60 tanks, Turkish soldiers were visible on Thursday near the airfield in Bamarni and at the mountaintop village of Amadiya, both roughly 15 miles south of the Turkish border.