US special forces and Kurds will direct massive air bombardment

US special forces have attached themselves to Kurdish military units to call in air strikes on Iraqi army positions when the Kurds advance at the start of the invasion of Iraq.

General Azad Miran, chief of military operations for the 62,000-strong army of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), said Kurdish forces would rely on American soldiers accompanying them to summon tactical air support.

More US special forces are expected to arrive soon in northern Iraq to reinforce the 130 personnel already here. They will accompany peshmerga (Kurdish soldiers) as they fight their way towards the Kirkuk and Mosul in northern Iraq, but the Kurds are not expected to enter the cities because of fears that this would provoke a Turkish invasion.

The US strategy has shifted towards greater reliance on the lightly armed but experienced Kurdish forces to bolster the "northern front" against the Iraqi army. American hopes of sending a land army through Turkey to invade northern Iraq were dashed when the Turkish parliament refused to allow the US to use Turkish bases.

Asked if each peshmerga unit would have US soldiers with it, a top Kurdish military official said: "That is what is happening." The US is now playing a crucial but secretive role in northern Iraq, using special forces in the same way they were used against the Taliban in Afghanistan. They will support the Kurdish infantry with massive US air power.

Masrur Barzani, the chief of KDP intelligence, said yesterday: "It would not be in our interests to take decisions without co-ordinating with our friends." General Miran told The Independent: "We have a strategy to control the Kurdish areas under the rule of the Iraqi regime. We are not talking about the cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, but the countryside is where we will operate." Massoud Barzani, the head of the KDP, said, however, that he hoped a Kurd would raise the flag of victory over Kirkuk.

The Iraqi army's northern front is held by the 5th and 1st Corps backed by two elite Republican Guard divisions, though these are beginning to send their armoured units south, closer to Baghdad.

Kurdish commanders stress they cannot move without American air cover, under the control of forward air controllers with the peshmerga, which they expect to knock out Iraqi artillery and tanks.

The US attack on northern Iraq is to be supplemented by its airborne brigades. Experienced Kurdish officers say it is likely that the US will strike from eastern Jordan, taking Iraqi army positions on the northern Euphrates, such as Haditha, which has a good airport. They believe the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk are not ultimately defensible and Saddam Hussein does not trust the regular army divisions stationed there to fight.

Iraq's much feared security forces are reported to have taken their confidential papers to Baghdad for safe-keeping. Arab settlers in formerly Kurdish villages are preparing to leave, even dismantling heavy equipment such as water pumps before they move south.

Military preparations within the Kurdish safe haven in northern Iraq, long defended by US and British air power, are increasingly visible and there are signs that war is very close. In the mountain-top town of Salahudin yesterday, 600 soldiers with Kalashnikovs and rockets marched down the main street. At the front line, peshmerga were assembling in ever greater numbers.

The Kurds and the US are anxious not to offend Turkey, which has said that it will launch its own invasion rather than see the Kurds occupy Kirkuk or Mosul. But MasoudBarzani said he was determined to see up to 300,000 Kurds return to areas from which they were ethnically cleansed by Baghdad over the past 30 years.

Kurdish leaders, who will be part of an Iraqi opposition delegation, are expected to have a critical tripartite two-day meeting with Turkish and US officials starting today in Ankara. The Kurds will try to allay Turkish fears about Kurds declaring independence, taking the northern cities or refusing to recognise the rights of the Turkomans in Kirkuk.

The US, originally willing to countenance a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq in return for American use of Turkish bases, has now reversed its position and is pressing Turkey not to attack. Masoud Barzani warned: "If the Turks come in, there will be a war, it will be major war."