11.   However other diplomats said that the council remained divided in its reaction to the Iraqi offensive and the subsequent US military retaliation on Tuesday.

12.   Iraq on Monday accused Turkey of blatant hypocrisy by feeling free to crush its own Kurdish rebellion while criticizing the Iraqi offensive into its Kurdish areas.

13.   Already, Republican rival Bob Dole has used the Iraqi offensive to criticize Clinton.

14.   Bahrain on Tuesday sent an air squadron to Kuwait to help fight a possible Iraqi offensive, the official Bahrain-based Gulf News Agency reported.

15.   Britain has circulated proposals for a UN Security Council condemnation of an Iraqi offensive in Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq, western diplomats said Tuesday.

16.   But the White House has pointedly not said that allied cooperation is a prerequisite for a US response to the Iraqi offensive in the Kurdish-controlled north.

17.   Clinton recently ordered a US military buildup in the Gulf region after an Iraqi military offensive in northern Iraq.

18.   Diplomats said that if Washington sought to cancel the deal in the light of the Iraqi offensive, it would run into resistance from other council members.

19.   Ekeus grounded the UN helicopters temporarily for security reasons following the Iraqi offensive and the US retaliation.

20.   The no-fly zone in southern Iraq has been extended in the wake of an Iraqi military offensive in the region, the British government said Tuesday.