U.N. Guards for Kurds Approved : Iraq: They will provide security in refugee camps, a move Baghdad had resisted. Kurdish leaders report progress in talks on autonomy, democratic reforms.

BAGHDAD, Iraq —  An agreement in principle has been reached with the Iraqi government to place U.N. guards in Iraqi refugee camps, a U.N. official said here Saturday.

The first 10 men have already arrived in Baghdad, he said.

Announcing the breakthrough on a U.N. security presence in the camps for Kurdish refugees, Bernt Bernander told reporters at a hastily called news conference that enough progress has been made in the talks with Iraqi officials for the United Nations to decide to field the first group.

Also on Saturday in Baghdad, Kurdish leaders claimed progress in negotiations on democratic reforms with the Iraqi government, but said disagreement on the boundaries of an independent Kurdistan was holding up a final pact.

Discussing the U.N. force, Bernander said U.N. staff members are being used for the task and that they are not military personnel or police. Under U.N. guidelines, they will be permitted to carry side arms.

The use of U.N. staff personnel falls short of allied proposals to place a U.N. police force in the camps, an approach rejected by Baghdad. But it could be viewed as setting a precedent for an armed U.N. presence and thereby provide an opening for the eventual withdrawal of thousands of U.S., French and British troops deployed around the camps.

Bernander, the top representative here for Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, the U.N. refugee special delegate to Iraq and Kuwait, said Sadruddin reached a tentative agreement with the Iraqis on a visit here last week. He said he sees no obstacle to completing the agreement and added that the Iraqis accept the deployment.

The United Nations hopes to have 50 to 60 guards in refugee camps in the next 10 days, he said. Eventually, a total of 400 to 500 would be deployed in northern Iraq and also in Basra province in southern Iraq.

The goal, Bernander said, is to establish a U.N. presence in the camps that will “have the effect of producing confidence among displaced people and provide an inducement for them to return home.” The staff will have no investigatory powers, he said.

He also asserted: “This is not a police force or military contingent that is slated to replace the coalition forces” in northern Iraq.

However, in an interview Friday when it became clear that the agreement was probable, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Thomas R. Pickering, told The Times that while the U.N. guards would lack “the military firepower necessary to resist a military onslaught by the Iraqi army,” they “would be an important piece in the chain.”

Pickering said that the Iraqi army, if it tried to interfere with the U.N. guards, would be defying the whole international community. Moreover, a Kurdish autonomy agreement would make a conflict between Iraqi soldiers and U.N. guards even less likely.

“In the long run, of course,” the ambassador went on, “the Kurds will have to put their faith and trust in that autonomy regime in which they will play a major role, I hope, in dealing with their own security.”

Nearly 2 million Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south fled toward Turkey and Iran after Iraqi troops crushed uprisings after the Gulf War.

Bernander said Kurdish officials had been informed of the planned U.N. deployment plan and had no objections. The United States and other members of the Security Council were also informed, he said.

He did not specify the exact role of the guards Saturday. In earlier negotiations, their role was portrayed as protecting relief workers rather than Kurds. It was assumed by U.N. officials, however, that their presence would also serve as a kind of protection for the Kurdish refugees. According to this reasoning, Iraqi soldiers would not dare attack Kurds in the presence of U.N. relief workers and security guards.

The sending of the armed U.N. staff represents a watered-down version of the original hopes of the Bush Administration.

The United States, Britain and other coalition partners had pressed U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to deploy a U.N. military peacekeeping contingent there. But Perez de Cuellar balked, offering only to send lightly armed U.N. police--provided that Iraq accepted them.

Iraq, however, refused even that proposal. Although President Bush then said he would ask the Security Council to pass a new resolution authorizing a peacekeeping force, it was soon obvious that such a resolution would probably be vetoed by both the Soviet Union and China, who are wary of U.N. involvement in the internal affairs of a nation.

The U.N. guards idea was then proposed by Sadruddin, the U.N. official in charge of relief.

Regarding the Kurds’ talks with the Iraqi government, Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, told reporters Saturday at his Baghdad news conference: “We are still negotiating about the area of autonomy. . . . There’s a different point of view.”

Barzani refused to say whether the sticking point was Kirkuk, a northern oil center briefly held by Kurdish guerrillas in their post-Gulf War rebellion against the government. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his Arab Baath Socialist Party have resisted past attempts to draw the city of 1 million into an autonomous region, and exiled Kurdish officials have said it remains a key demand.

The Kurdish delegation has been here for two weeks, holding a second round of talks following the April 24 declaration by Jalal Talabani, co-leader with Barzani of the seven-party Iraqi Kurdistan Front, that he and the Iraqi leader had reached agreement in principle on democratic reforms and autonomy for the country’s 3.5 million Kurds.

Saturday’s news conference was the Kurds’ first detailed report on the talks.

Barzani said Baghdad officials have agreed to a number of demands on autonomy. They include, he said, a general amnesty for the rebels, the return of Kurds to their towns and villages, abolition of emergency laws, plans for developing poor sectors of Kurdistan and the establishment of a university in the Kurdish cultural capital of Sulaymaniyah.

In the political area, Barzani and members of his delegation said the Baghdad regime, which has imposed iron-fisted rule on Iraq for more than two decades, agreed in principle to reforms, including free elections and free speech and political pluralism. They also said the Baathist regime agreed to surrender its exclusive control over the organs of state.

Times staff writer Stanley Meisler, in Washington, contributed to this story.