PRESIDENT Clinton called several world leaders yesterday to discuss how to react to Iraqi military action in Northern Iraq in which, according to Kurdish rebel sources, 100 defectors from the Iraqi army were massacred, the White House said.
White House spokesman Michael McCurry said the President, spending the weekend in his home state of Arkansas, called fewer than a half dozen world leaders "who share our concern about Iraqi military activity in Northern Iraq."
He would not give specifics but officials said President Clinton talked to the British Prime Minister, Mr John Major, and was likely to speak with French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Dr Helmut Kohl as well as Arab leaders, including Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Hussein.
Later yesterday, President Saddam Hussein ordered his troops to pull out of Kurdish areas of northern Iraq after a day in which rebel leaders reported Iraqi air strikes and tank movements.
But word of the intended withdrawal came too late to save Iraq's much needed oil for food deal with the United Nations.
UN Secretary General Dr Boutros Boutros Ghali announced in New York he would delay the plan, which allows Iraq to sell 2 billion of oil over six months to buy humanitarian supplies for Iraqis suffering under sanctions imposed after Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
Dr Boutros Ghali said he was very much concerned about the deterioration of the situation in northern Iraq" and had delayed sending UN personnel to Iraq to implement the deal.
Meanwhile, Gen John Shalikashvili, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, arrived in Saudi Arabia yesterday for consultations, and to secure approval for the use of Saudi bases to launch punitive missions.
The list of options drawn up by the national security council yesterday ranges from full scale air strikes against Iraqi troops, tanks and military bases, to diplomatic and tightened economic sanctions.
The response most expected in Washington yesterday was a repetition of the 1993 cruise missile strikes against Iraq's military headquarters in Baghdad, after the alleged assassination attempt against former president George Bush. Iraq's rebuilt Ministry of Defence, its airfields and military bases near the Kurdish region could all be described as legitimate military targets.
Such an attack would not be immediate, but would follow top level consultations and clarification of events on the ground. The situation was confused yesterday after contradictory accounts that the Iraqis had started to pull back, but that they had also begun a new bombardment of the Kurdish town of Sulaimaniyah.
Iraqi tanks and troops supporting the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) captured the main Kurdish city of Arbil from the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) on Saturday after an artillery barrage. The Iraqi flag was hoisted over what used to be the Kurdish parliament.
PUK leader Mr Jalai Talabani and the opposition Iraqi National Congress (INC) said the Iraqi offensive continued yesterday and that government soldiers executed nearly 100 former soldiers had detected earlier to the INC.
Areas 15 km from the north eastern town near the Iranian border came under heavy shelling yesterday, he said. The INC said a column of Iraqi T-72 tanks was moving deeper into rebel Kurdish territory, apparently headed for Sulaimaniya.
"There is no withdrawal. This is an Iraqi invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan," an INC spokesman in London said before Baghdad's announcement of a pullback.
The two Kurdish factions, split along political and tribal lines, have a long history of bloodshed and shifting alliances with the main powers in the region - Iraq and Iran.
As the US maximum alert in the region continues, defence officials in Washington said more than 300 US planes and 20 warships were immediately available.