IRAQ'S TROOPS WITHDRAW FROM CITY : SOME TANKS REPORTED ON KURDISH OUTSKIRTS.

Byline: Waiel Faleh Associated Press 

As U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf remained on high alert, Iraqi troops began to withdraw Sunday from Irbil, the main city in the U.S.-protected Kurdish ``safe haven'' in northern Iraq.

Iraq captured the city Saturday in Saddam Hussein's most adventurous military foray in five years. The attack prompted President Clinton to put the 20,000 U.S. troops in the region on high alert.

After a Cabinet meeting in Baghdad late Sunday, the Iraqi defense minister, Lt. Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmed, said Saddam had ordered him to withdraw all his troops from Erbil.

Gisper Nielsen of the U.N. Guard Contingency stationed in Erbil said Iraqi troops began withdrawing from the city Sunday afternoon and were still leaving when he spoke via telephone earlier this morning.

The Iraqi offensive produced a large number of casualties, Nielsen added, but he could not confirm a specific number.

Another U.N. official stationed in Erbil, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Iraqi tanks and troops had left the city this morning but some tanks remained just outside the city limits.

``We do not know if they are going to go or if they are going to stay,'' he said.

Iraq's state-run media had warned the United States and its Western allies earlier Sunday not to intervene on behalf of the Kurds.

``The Iraqi people . . . are ready to provide an example that will inevitably remind the Americans of the Vietnam complex,'' the newspaper al-Jumhouriya said.

Saddam's forces stormed Erbil on Saturday to dislodge one Kurdish faction, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and allow a second, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, to move in.

Speaking from the Kurdish region, PUK leader Jalal Talabani said on ABC's ``This Week with David Brinkley,'' that ``hundreds of people were killed or injured'' during the 12-hour onslaught of artillery, missiles and tank fire.

Separately, the PUK claimed Sunday that Iraqi forces ``summarily executed'' 96 members of the opposition Iraqi National Congress at a base near Erbil.

Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency said Iraqi forces also captured Sulaymaniya, the area's second-largest city. The report, which quoted ``sources close to Iraqi Kurds,'' could not be confirmed.

Erbil lies 12 miles inside the safe haven carved out by the U.S.-led forces to protect the Kurds from Saddam's military after the ethnic rebels mounted a failed rebellion against Baghdad in 1991.

While the Kurdish Democratic Party wants independence from Iraq, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Aziz said the leader of the KDP asked Saddam to intervene to defeat the PUK. It is unclear how strong the possible alliance might be.

In the wake of the fighting, the United Nations said it would delay sending personnel to implement an Iraqi oil-for-food deal.

Iraq has been under U.N. sanctions since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The U.N. deal would permit the sale of $2 billion worth of oil to buy food and medicine for the Iraqi people.

U.N. spokesman Sylvana Foa said the action was intended as a safety measure for workers.

There was no heavy fighting in Erbil on Sunday, and Iraqi troops and allied KDP fighters appeared to be in control.

Aziz telephoned U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on Sunday and told him that Iraqi troops had been ordered to withdraw and that ``the situation is calm in Erbil.''

U.N. workers toured the area Sunday.

``The parliament building had been taken over by Iraqi troops and there were many Iraqi tanks on the road between Erbil and Mossul,'' Manuel de Almeida y Silva said Sunday.