Salahuddin, Iraq ? Kurdish leaders said Friday they would resist if the United States let Turks join an invasion of northern Iraq, raising fears American troops will be caught in a generations-old ethnic struggle for control of the strategic border region.

Turkey plans to send thousands of troops into northern Iraq during any U.S. invasion, ostensibly to provide humanitarian aid for people displaced by the fighting. It also wants to prevent weapons held by Kurdish groups from falling into the hands of independence-minded Turkish Kurds, who also have bases in northern Iraq.

“Our people are going to resist the plan with all the means at their disposal,” said Kurdish Deputy Prime Minister Sami Abdul Rahman. “Nothing whatsoever will persuade us to accept an incursion of Turkish forces.”

“The answer of our people is a flat no,” he said after closed-door sessions of a conference of 50 members of an Iraqi opposition steering committee formed in December to guide plans for the country if Saddam Hussein is toppled.

The Kurds fear the Turks will remain indefinitely in northern Iraq and try to subjugate Kurdish aspirations of self-rule. That could encourage Turkey’s own sizable Kurdish minority’s demands for the same rights.

Turkish troops will be “a boot on our chest” meant to “strangle our people,” Rahman said.

“The freedom of our people is part of the price paid to Turkey” for its cooperation in the U.S. military plan, he said at the mountain stronghold of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Kurds in the bazaars, streets and even the floor of the Kurdish parliament have said they would be willing to take up arms against any Turkish forces who enter the autonomous enclave. That could drag U.S. troops into an ethnic war.