The U.N. Must Deal With Kurds’ Plight : The trick will be getting an OK from all of the permanent Security Council members

The United Nations is moving to take over administrative responsibility for Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq, but that still leaves it up to U.S. and Western European troops to provide security for hundreds of thousands of some of Saddam Hussein’s bitterest foes. Britain, backed by the rest of the European Community, wisely believes that this burden also should be assumed by the United Nations. It’s calling for a U.N. police force--as distinct from observers--to move in to protect the Kurds so that Western armed forces can move out. Events in northern Iraq add urgency to that proposal.

American military officers and others on the scene report that within the Kurdish refugee ranks, ancient jealousies, feuds and open banditry are asserting themselves, to the detriment of relief efforts. Guerrillas, known as peshmerga , are said to be demanding payment to allow people to descend from squalid mountain camps to the shelter of tent cities on the flatlands. In one case, 400 Christian families have been prevented from coming down. It’s the old and familiar story of the strong preying on the weak, the armed on the helpless--and whether any of this will change much once the mass of Kurds is resettled in the tent camps seems doubtful.

This is not the kind of social and political milieu where Western intervenors do well. Indeed, the American and West European forces can almost certainly expect only ingratitude and hostility if they try to mediate Kurdish internal affairs, as inevitably they would be called on to do.

What’s the alternative? A multinational, multiethnic U.N.-sponsored police force that would provide protection against Saddam Hussein, and with which the Kurds might identify more readily than they will with an entirely Western force.

Getting approval from all five of the permanent U.N. Security Council members for such an operation won’t be easy. China, for one, deeply distrusts anything that even hints at a precedent for interfering in a country’s internal affairs. But however hard the task, the effort should be pushed vigorously. America and its European allies are inviting trouble--if not immediately, then not far down the road--by involving themselves in Iraq’s tribal politics and ethnic animosities, no matter how worthily humane their motives. Protecting the Kurds ought to be a U.N.-sanctioned action, with broad multinational participation.