ARBIL, Iraq (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The U.S. is abandoning plans to introduce democracy in Iraq after a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, according to Kurdish leaders who recently met American officials.

The Kurds say the decision resulted from pressure from U.S. allies in the Middle East who fear a war will lead to radical political change in the region, a leading British paper reported on Sunday, February 17.

The Kurdish leaders are enraged by an American plan to occupy Iraq but largely retain the government in Baghdad as the only changes would be the replacement of President Saddam and his lieutenants with senior U.S. military officers, the Independent reported.

"Conquerors always call themselves liberators," the British paper quoted Sami Abdul-Rahman, deputy prime minister of the Kurdish administration as saying, in a reference to Bush's speech last week in which he said U.S. troops were going to liberate Iraq.

Kurdish officials strongly believe the new U.S. policy is the result of pressure from regional powers, notably Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the paper added.

Kurdish leaders are deeply alarmed by U.S. intentions, which only became clear at a meeting in Ankara earlier in the month and from recent public declarations by U.S. officials.

"If the U.S. wants to impose its own government, regardless of the ethnic and religious composition of Iraq, there is going to be a backlash." Hoshyar Zebari, a veteran Kurdish leader, said to the paper.

Abdul-Rahman charged the U.S. of planning cosmetic changes in Iraq. "This is to give the government on a platter to the second line of Ba'athists [the ruling party]," he said, the paper reported.

According to the paper, the U.S. appears to be returning to the policy it pursued at the end of the Gulf War in 1991. It did seek to get rid of President Saddam but wanted to avoid a radical change in Iraq. The U.S. did not support the uprisings of Shia Muslims and Kurds because it feared a transformation in Iraqi politics that might have destabilized its allies in the Middle East or benefited Iran.

The two Kurdish parties ­ the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which rules western Kurdistan, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan ­ are at the heart of the Iraqi opposition. Together they rule four million people in an area the size of Switzerland that has been outside President Saddam's control since 1991, the Independent reported.

The destabilizing impact of the impending war is already being felt in the mountains of northern Iraq, the Independent correspondent in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil added in the report.

Turkey has demanded that its troops be allowed to take over a swath of territory along the border inside Iraq with an ostensible reason to prevent a flood of Kurdish refugees trying to flee into Turkey, but the Kurdish parties say they are quite capable of doing this themselves, read the paper.

They say the Turkish demand, to which they suspect the U.S. has agreed in return for the use of Turkish military facilities, is the first step in a Turkish plan to advance into Iraqi Kurdistan, it added.