PARIS, May 17: A consultant to the French Foreign Ministry’s Centre for Forecasts and Analysis (CAP: Centre d’analyse et previsions) says that in his opinion there’s a 90 per cent chance that the United States will stage an attack on Iraq.

Gerard Chaliand, a noted international specialist on guerrilla warfare and terrorism, says that the United States, according to his intelligence, will make use of Iraq’s Kurdish population in the eventual unrolling of the US attack. “All will depend,” he cautions, “on the American first strike,” which he says the US will undertake single-handedly, adding that “and whether the first strike is able to successfully destroy Baghdad’s offensive capacities.”

Only then, he says, will the United States be able to make use of the Kurdish forces which, he implies, it has nurtured on the ground, in preparation for the long-expected attack. “Once the Iraqi army is placed on the defensive,” notes Chaliand, “the United States will be able to activate a Kurdish offensive within Iraq with Kurdish troops serving in a backup capacity.

He points to the country’s presidential guard — which totals some 200,000 men in his estimation — as being one of the main reasons why, in spite of a US attack, President Saddam Hussein looks to have a good chance of remaining in power no matter how forceful a US attack.

“The presidential guard” — which he refers to as the “Garde republicaine” — “is a crack elite and includes some of the best warriors in the region.”

“Which is why,” he adds, “I don’t really believe that the US — in spite of its determination to attack Iraq, undoubtedly out of political considerations, parliamentary elections being held in November — will change the situation much either in Iraq or in the region, no matter how many forces they send to the front, no matter how superior their firepower.”

“Another reason why the United States has been thinking twice about undertaking an attack is the perception that a successful offensive against Iraq — if that can be done, that is — would bring about in its wake a partitioning of the country, and the creation, within Iraq, of an independent Kurdistan state.”