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General says Iraq may need U.N. force

BAGHDAD - The top U.S. military commander in Iraq said Tuesday that U.N. peacekeeping forces may need to replace departing U.S. troops in the nation's oil-rich north if a simmering feud between Arabs and minority Kurds continues through 2011.

BAGHDAD - The top U.S. military commander in Iraq said Tuesday that U.N. peacekeeping forces may need to replace departing U.S. troops in the nation's oil-rich north if a simmering feud between Arabs and minority Kurds continues through 2011.

A U.N. force might offer both the Iraqi leadership and President Obama a politically palatable alternative to a continued U.S. presence to prevent ethnic tensions from descending into war. Although occasional bombings by Sunni extremists on Shiite targets grab the headlines, many observers believe the Kurdish-Arab dispute is the biggest fault line in Iraq today.

Gen. Ray Odierno brought up the possibility of a U.N. force during an interview with the Associated Press. He observed that there is no immediate end in sight to the years-long dispute between Arabs and Kurds, who have managed an uneasy political dance under American supervision since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

"That's something that has to be worked out," Odierno said, discussing potential options to defuse hostilities if a pilot program to bring Kurdish troops into the Arab-dominated Iraqi army fails.

"If we have not integrated, we might have to think of some other mechanism," he said. "I don't know what that is yet. Is it a Chapter 6 U.N. force? I don't know."

Chapter 6 of the U.N. charter refers to peacekeeping duties such as investigating and mediating disputes.

At issue is a swath of land through three northern Iraqi provinces that Kurdish leaders want included in their semiautonomous region, known as Kurdistan. The area sits on top of some of the world's largest oil reserves and has been a flash point since Hussein forced tens of thousands of Kurds from their homes and replaced them with Arabs.

But the United Nations has so far been unable to broker a compromise to the land fight, a dispute that has compounded years of distrust between Arabs and Kurds.

A U.N. spokeswoman in Baghdad, Radhia Achouri, directed questions about peacekeepers to the Iraqi government and the U.N. Security Council. In New York, U.N. headquarters officials and diplomats said there had been no discussion about the possibility of a U.N. peacekeeping force in northern Iraq.