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WASHINGTON - Science is getting a grip on people’s fears.

As Americans revel in all things scary today for Halloween, scientists say they now know better what’s going on inside our brains when a spook jumps out and scares us. Knowing how fear rules the brain should lead to treatments for a major medical problem: When irrational fears go haywire.

“We’re making a lot of progress,” said University of Michigan psychology professor Stephen Maren. “We’re taking all of what we learned from the basic studies of animals and bringing that into the clinical practices that help people. Things are starting to come together in a very important way.”

About 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety disorders, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. A Harvard Medical School study estimated the annual cost to the U.S. economy in 1999 at roughly $42 billion.

Fear is a basic primal emotion that is key to evolutionary survival. It’s one we share with animals. Genetics plays a big role in the development of overwhelming - and needless - fear, psychologists say. But so do traumatic events.

“Fear is a funny thing,” said Ted Abel, a fear researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. “One needs enough of it, but not too much of it.”

Armi Rowe, a Connecticut freelance writer and mother, said she used to be “one of those rational types who are usually calm under pressure.” She was someone who would ski the treacherous black diamond trails of snowy mountains. Then one day, in the midst of coping with a couple of serious illnesses in her family, she felt fear closing in on her while driving alone. The crushing pain on her chest felt like a heart attack. She called 911.

“I was literally frozen with fear,” she said. It was an anxiety attack. The first of many.

The first sign she would get would be sweaty palms and then a numbness in the pit of her stomach and queasiness. Eventually it escalated until she felt as if she were being attacked by a wild animal.

“There’s a trick to panic attack,” said David Carbonell, a Chicago psychologist specializing in treating anxiety disorders. “You’re experiencing this powerful discomfort but you’re getting tricked into treating it like danger.”

These days, thanks to counseling, self-study, calming exercises and introspection, Rowe knows how to stop or at least minimize those attacks early on.

Scientists figure they can improve that fear-dampening process by learning how fear runs through the brain and body.

The fear hot spot is the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the deep brain.

The amygdala isn’t responsible for all of people’s fear response, but it’s like the burglar alarm that connects to everything else, said New York University psychology and neural science professor Elizabeth Phelps.

Emory University psychiatry and psychology professor Michael Davis found that a certain chemical reaction in the amygdala is crucial in the way mice and people learn to overcome fear. When that reaction is deactivated in mice, they never learn to counter their fears.

Scientists found D-cycloserine, a drug already used to fight hard-to-treat tuberculosis, strengthens that good chemical reaction in mice. Working in combination with therapy, it seems to do the same in people. It was first shown effective with people who have a fear of heights. It also worked in tests with other types of fear, and it’s now being studied in survivors of the World Trade Center attacks and the Iraq war.

The work is promising, but Michigan’s Maren cautions that therapy will still be needed: “You’re not going to be able to take a pill and make these things go away.”

That’s because “fear is the most powerful emotion,” said University of California Los Angeles psychology professor Michael Fanselow.

And people recognize fear in other humans faster than other emotions, according to a new study being published next month. Research appearing in the journal Emotion involved volunteers who were bombarded with pictures of faces showing fear, happiness and no expression. They quickly recognized and reacted to the faces of fear - even when they were turned upside down.

“We think we have some built-in shortcuts of the brain that serve the role that helps us detect anything that could be threatening,” said study author Vanderbilt University psychology professor David Zald.

Other studies have shown that just by being very afraid, other bodily functions change. One study found that very frightened people can withstand more pain than those not experiencing fear. Another found that experiencing fear or merely perceiving it in others improved people’s attention and brain skills.

To help overcome overwhelming fear, psychologist Carbonell, author of the “Panic Attacks Workbook,” has his patients distinguish between a real threat and a perceived one. They practice fear attacks and their response to them. He even has them fill out questionnaires in the middle of a fear attack, which changes their thinking and reduces their anxiety.

That’s important because the normal response for dealing with a real threat is either flee or fight, Carbonell said. But if the threat is not real, the best way to deal with fear is just the opposite: “Wait it out and chill.”

There’s no finer experience than taking your family on a crisp, sunny, fall adventure along the Centennial Trail. Stretching from Snohomish to Arlington and framed by the resplendent Cascades and quiet Machias, the red and yellow trees and clean air remind us why we endure the gray skies and light rain of Puget Sound’s winter.

Now we have an opportunity to continue that trail into the heart of suburban King County and simultaneously provide an Eastside rail-transit line that scores of Snohomish County commuters could utilize for years to come, helping limit highway congestion as growth continues.

But if Snohomish County leaders don’t act quickly, King County and the Port of Seattle may consummate a pending deal with Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway, resulting in King County control of a crucial rail-and-trail corridor, and the possible ripping out of the corridor’s 41-mile rail line from Woodinville to Renton. This would leave Snohomish County commuters with a dead end.

Instead, let’s keep the tracks and initiate a demonstration project using a new self-propelled rail car called a “diesel multiple unit” (DMU). It’s far cheaper to purchase and operate than typical commuter rail (like the Sounder train that connects Everett and Seattle). The DMU also burns biofuels, carries bikes and can be maintained by community-college diesel mechanics.

In the United States, DMUs are made by Colorado Rail Car and Siemens. They’ve been generating revenue for six years in the West Palm Beach area, and are planned for suburban Portland, Oceanside-Escondido in California, Alaska and Amtrak’s Vermonter service.

A single double-deck car can carry 188 passengers and costs around $4 million. Its lower weight requires less investment in track and the bi-level feature allows shorter platforms. The DMU can operate on separate tracks with freight trains or on tracks embedded in concrete like a streetcar, allowing them to divert from the corridor to downtown areas.

The Cascadia Center is working with a group of community leaders in the North Sound region to bring a DMU train to the Bellingham-Everett corridor in the next few years, to supplement Seattle-Vancouver, B.C., Amtrak service and connect with Sounder in Everett.

Why not piggyback on these efforts and share equipment and maintenance between the Eastside and North Sound? We could even run a DMU connector service between Snohomish and Everett.

Snohomish City Councilman Larry Countryman, Snohomish airfield owner Kandace Harvey and business leaders support the rail-and-trail idea, as does Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon.

How do we pay for it?

Private developers and cities can enter partnerships to develop train stations, fix the tracks and build mixed-use development with private capital, as with the South Lake Union streetcar in Seattle.

Currently, there is no direct bus service between the fast-growing east Snohomish County communities of Snohomish and Monroe to jobs-rich Bellevue in East King County - only one early morning bus with a connection from the Highway 520 corridor. Surely, Community Transit, Sound Transit and Metro can team up to share the relatively inexpensive operating costs for the train.

Proponents of the trail-only approach had early on argued that the tracks were in poor shape and conversion to high-capacity transit would cost billions. Cascadia has independently hired a team of respected, retired rail executives led by Read Fay to walk the tracks and provide an estimate of what it would cost to have the DMU units travel at a top speed of 40 mph. The likely estimate is in the range of $20 million to $40 million. The rail/trail corridor could serve as an important emergency transportation lifeline for first responders and citizens in case a major earthquake destroys our critical bridge infrastructure.

So don’t let your King County neighbors prematurely cut a vital transit link along the congested Interstate 405/Highway 9 corridor. A commuter rail line connecting eastern Snohomish County to Redmond, Kirkland, Bellevue and Renton needs to be on the map of our region’s transportation future.

Bruce Agnew is a former Snohomish County Council member and now serves as director of Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center for Regional Development, www.cascadiaproject.org

NILES, Mich. - Talk about being in a pickle: A judge gave a 35-year-old man probation in a case that police said involved an assault with pickles.

According to police reports, the problems began when Bobby Lee Bolen was hanging out at his then-friend Jody Lee’s home in Buchanan on Aug. 20.

Bolen went to the refrigerator and helped himself to some pickles. According to the report, Lee told Bolen he couldn’t afford to feed everyone and not to eat his pickles. Bolen then began yelling and swearing and stormed out, according to the report.

Later, Bolen barged back into the house and argued with Lee, police said. Lee told police Bolen slammed him down on the couch, threw two large pickles at him and said, “Here’s your damn pickles.”

Bolen also shoved former friend J.W. Romanski III and beat Lee with a telephone when he tried to call 911, according to police reports.

“If this is not the silliest case I’ve ever seen in this courtroom, it certainly is in the Top 10,” Berrien Trial Court Judge Scott Schofield said.

Bolen’s sentence included 54 days in jail with credit for 54 days served and one year of probation.

Follow a few safety tips to keep tonight’s Halloween activities safe for all the little goblins and ghosts. Suggestions, from the Seattle Police Department, include taking a flashlight and knowing the route. Remind children not to enter strangers’ homes or cars and that they are not to eat any food items until they have been inspected. Throw away any candy that has been opened.

Also remind trick-or-treaters about using crosswalks, not crossing the street from between parked cars and how drivers have a difficult time seeing people in the dark. Watch for open flames of jack-o’-lanterns that can catch costumes and long wigs on fire. And finally, make sure that fake knives, swords and guns are made from flexible materials to avoid accidental injury or having them mistaken for the real thing.

Civic calendar

Top of the town welcome

Today: Mayor Greg Nickels kicks off the Mayors Climate Summit (Thursday-Friday) by raising a “Seattle Climate Action Now” flag atop the Space Needle at 10:30 a.m. Former President Clinton and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will address the conference of more than 100 mayors from across the country.

People and pets discussion

Thursday: First of several open discussions led by the Seattle Humane Society on “how best to serve the animals and people who love them” at 6 p.m., Kent Regional Library, 212 Second Ave. N., Kent. For a schedule of meetings on the future of animal welfare in the community, check www.seattlehumane.org

Clinton book tour

Thursday: Former President Clinton will autograph copies of his new book, “Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World,” at 8 p.m. at the University Book Store, 4326 University Way N.E., Seattle. Signing guidelines will be enforced, according to the store. For complete details, check its Web site: www.ubookstore.com.

Here & Now is compiled by Seattle Times lead news assistant Lynne Berry. To submit an item, e-mail herenow@seattletimes.com or call 206-464-2226.

Oct. 31, 1911: This date marks the completion of the second phase of the Denny Regrade, one of several projects designed to level several of Seattle’s steepest hills. The massive regrade incorporated an area from Second Avenue to Fifth Avenue and from Pike Street to Cedar Street. It took eight years to sluice more than 5 million cubic yards of dirt, mostly into Elliott Bay. The greatest excavations of Denny Hill were along Blanchard Street, which was lowered 107 feet at Fourth Avenue and 93 feet at Fifth Avenue.

Source: Historylink.org

Disney producer Don Hahn calls animation “the ultimate team sport.”

To prove it, he’ll bring to Everett artwork from the Disney archives, some of which, he says, has never been seen. It’s a way to show the “people who draw and paint and work on scripts and music, who contribute to making an animated film,” he said.

Hahn is the keynoter for the second annual “2D or Not 2D” animation festival Friday and Saturday at the Everett Theatre. Hahn will present films and share what he knows at 7 p.m. Saturday during the festival, which is rich with animator talks, animated film showings, and screenings of entries for the Golden Pencil awards, given out at 8 p.m. Saturday.

Female animators are featured Friday, including filmmaker Nancy Beiman, producer Kathie Flood of Microsoft and Pixar animator Kureha Yokoo.

Michel Gagné, an award-winning animator and artist, will show a variety of his work for film, TV and books at 3:35 p.m. Saturday. Animator, director and educator Tony White, the festival’s founder, will give a talk and screen “Fire Gods,” about the history of glassblowing, at 6:15 p.m. Saturday.

Like most kids, Hahn grew up on Saturday morning cartoons.

“I loved Rocky and Bullwinkle, ‘The Flintstones’ and ‘The Jetsons,’ ” he said. In college as a music major, “I got a summer job at Disney, and I never left.”

That was in the mid-1970s, when many of the great animators were still at the studio, including Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Woolie Reitherman, producer-director of “The Jungle Book.”

“I’d get coffee and clean his Moviola screen,” said Hahn. “I got seduced by the animation process. It could exercise every creative muscle I had. I drew and did some cleanup and animation on some films, and ultimately thought my gift was working with people as a producer. I produced the animation on ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ then ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘The Lion King.’ ‘Roger Rabbit’ was a big general-audience movie, a film-noir murder mystery that “proved animation can be for everybody,” Hahn said.

Invited to Everett by festival founder White, Hahn said: “This festival is really about the art. Young filmmakers hear experienced filmmakers. And I learn from seeing new filmmakers, young high-school and college-aged kids.”

Hahn wrote “Animation Magic,” a guide for kids, 10 years ago, and is now doing an updated edition. “I love being able to pass the torch to people,” he said.

“When I was going to college in the ’70s, you still had to work with pencil and paper and film and a camera. Now you can go to a local computer store and buy a desktop and create your own animation. It takes the barriers down.”

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com

Autos

Executive dismisses sabotage theory: NASCAR has a “Water-gate.”

The racing organization conceded Monday that water got into the fuel supply of more than two cars during Sunday’s Pep Boys Auto 500 Nextel Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, apparently leading to a crash that took out top contenders in the closing laps.

Denny Hamlin was leading with three laps to go when his car stalled while taking the green flag after a caution period. Martin Truex Jr., who led the most laps Sunday, smashed into the back of Hamlin’s car and finished 31st. Hamlin slipped to 24th.

Both were in the 12-driver, 10-race Chase for the Nextel Cup. How many cars had water-contaminated fuel?

“It’s more than two and less than [the full field of] 43 at the moment,” said John Darby, NASCAR’s Nextel Cup director.

Darby dismissed sabotage as a possible explanation, saying too many teams were affected by the problem.

“For those who have their evil, twisted conspiracy hats on, we want to put that to rest,” Darby said. “If it was sabotage, it would have to be the kind of thing where someone hates NASCAR racing across the board.”

Jimmie Johnson won the race.

Basketball

American standout Leslie gave birth in June: More than four months after giving birth, center Lisa Leslie is back on the court - joining the U.S. team for its eight-game college tour that begins Wednesday against Maryland.

Leslie, who gave birth to Lauren Jolie Lockwood on June 25, sat out the Los Angeles Sparks’ WNBA season while she was pregnant.

Storm guard Sue Bird also is on the U.S. team, which is guided by Storm coach Anne Donovan.

Cal’s Randle has biopsy: California point guard Jerome Randle underwent a biopsy on his kidney and will likely miss at least a month.

NHL

Goalie Kiprusoff will have a lot of money to save: Miikka Kiprusoff, 31, agreed to a $35 million, six-year extension with the Flames that will keep the All-Star goaltender in Calgary through the 2013-14 season.

Jones is suspended: Philadelphia defenseman Randy Jones was suspended two games by the league for his violent hit on Boston’s Patrice Bergeron on Saturday.

Bondra retires: Peter Bondra, 39, retired from pro hockey to become general manager of Slovakia’s national team. He scored 503 goals in the NHL, mostly for the Washington Capitals.

Tennis

Betfair probe: An online betting exchange investigated another pro match for suspicious betting patterns but found nothing wrong.

Betfair, the company that voided bets on a match in August for the same reason, looked into Dmitry Tursunov’s win over Boris Pashanski at last week’s St. Petersburg Open in Russia.

Sharapova to play in WTA Championships: Maria Sharapova of Russia clinched the final place at the season-ending WTA Championships in Madrid, Spain, and American Venus Williams withdrew because of dizzy spells.

Play starts next Tuesday.

Boxing

Romanian boxers get lifetime bans: Three Romanian boxers - Marius Bogdan Dinu, Ronald Gavril and Gabriel Julian Stan - were sent home from the world championships and banned for life after reportedly being caught shoplifting at a Nordstrom’s store in Chicago.

Soccer

Strong first impressions: Juan Pablo Angel of New York, Cuauhtemoc Blanco of Chicago or Luciano Emilio of D.C. United could win two of Major League Soccer’s top year-end awards next month.

All were announced as finalists for MLS Most Valuable Player and for Newcomer of the Year.

Olympics

Vancouver committee signs UN environmental agreement: Organizers for the 2010 Winter Games signed a United Nations agreement as part of their efforts to tout the Vancouver Games’ commitment to the environment.

But the pledge reignited criticism of the negative impact from the infrastructure built for the Games as well as the carbon emissions resulting from the expected visitors to the region.

Seattle Times news services

NEW YORK - Major League Baseball had this message for Alex Rodriguez and agent Scott Boras: Shame on you.

Boras announced during Game 4 of the World Series on Sunday night that A-Rod was opting out of the final three seasons of his contract with the New York Yankees. The timing left baseball officials livid, and Boras apologized Monday evening, just after Rodriguez filed with the players’ association and became a free agent for the first time since 2000.

“We were very disappointed that Scott Boras would try to upstage our premier baseball event of the season with his announcement,” Bob DuPuy, baseball’s chief operating officer, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

“There was no reason to make an announcement last night other than to try to put his selfish interests and that of one individual player above the overall good of the game,” DuPuy said. “Last night and today belong to the Boston Red Sox, who should be celebrated for their achievement, and to the Colorado Rockies, who made such an unbelievable run to the World Series.”

Boras said causing a distraction was an unintended consequence.

“I apologize to the Boston Red Sox and Colorado Rockies and their players, Major League Baseball and its players, and baseball fans everywhere for that interference,” he said in a statement. “The teams and players involved deserved to be the focus of the evening and honored with the utmost respect. The unfortunate result was not my intent, but is solely my fault. I could have handled this situation better, and for that I am truly sorry.”

Red Sox fans sure took notice fast. After their team won the title for the second time in four seasons, they stood behind the visitors’ dugout at Coors Field and chanted: “Don’t sign A-Rod!”

“Kind of strange timing,” Red Sox President Larry Lucchino said after Boston completed its sweep of Colorado.

New York, which failed to make the World Series in all of Rodriguez’s seasons, maintained it will not attempt to re-sign A-Rod now that he has opted out.

“No chance,” Hank Steinbrenner, a son of owner George Steinbrenner, said Monday at Legends Field. “Not if it’s made official.”

Rodriguez signed his record $252 million, 10-year contract with Texas before the 2001 season. By cutting the deal short, he will have earned $180 million over seven seasons in signing bonus, salaries and his assignment bonus from when he was traded. In addition, he has earned $3.65 million in award bonuses and is in line to gain as much as $1.8 million more for postseason awards this year.

Terminating the contract saved the Texas Rangers $21.3 million they owed the Yankees over the next three years, payments agreed to at the time of the 2004 trade.

Hank Steinbrenner did not make much of Boras’ timing on the announcement.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “But I’m sure there’s a lot of people that aren’t very happy about it. Other baseball people, the commissioner’s office, the Red Sox.”

Hank Steinbrenner said the team left messages with Rodriguez, and “we really wanted to meet with him.”

“We wanted him to stay a Yankee. We wanted to let him know how much we wanted him,” he said. “The bottom line is … do we really want anybody that really doesn’t want to be a Yankee? How the heck can you do that? Compare him with [Derek] Jeter. Jeter, since he was a little kid, all he ever wanted to do was play shortstop for the Yankees. That’s what we want.”

New York was preparing to offer Rodriguez a four- or five-year extension worth between $25 million and $30 million annually and had hoped to meet with A-Rod to present the offer.

“We expressed our interest in keeping him in pinstripes, and requested the opportunity to convey those feelings to him directly with the Steinbrenner family in an open, face-to-face dialogue,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said in a statement.

Cashman sounded as if Rodriguez’s stay in the Bronx was over.

“Alex was a key part of our success over the last four seasons, and I appreciate having the opportunity to work with him,” he said. “I only wish we could have raised a championship trophy together during his time here, which was the ultimate goal we all shared.”

Also among the 57 players who filed for free agency were Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera, catcher Jorge Posada and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz; Minnesota outfielder Torii Hunter; Colorado pitchers Jeremy Affeldt and Jorge Julio; and San Francisco’s Barry Bonds. Also filing were former Mariners Jeff Cirillo (Arizona) and Jose Mesa (Philadelphia).

TACOMA - After less than three months, a planned 10-month experiment with a dinner train transplanted from Renton to Tacoma has ended with the shutdown of Spirit of Washington Dinner Train service.

Dinner train owner Eric Temple says higher-than-anticipated costs coupled with lower-than-projected ticket sales doomed the train’s run in Pierce County.

The shutdown means about 50 employees will be laid off.

The last run was Sunday.

The city of Tacoma had a 10-month contract with the dinner train for use of the city-owned tracks.

The train operated successfully for 15 years from Renton to Woodinville along Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks along the east side of Lake Washington before a planned freeway expansion cut off the southern part of the rail route.

The dinner train moved to Tacoma Rail tracks in early August.

TRENTON, N.J. — The use of cholesterol and blood-pressure medicines by young adults appears to be rising rapidly — at a faster pace than among senior citizens, according to an industry report being released today.

Experts point to higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure and high-cholesterol problems among young people. Also, doctors are getting more aggressive with preventive treatments.

“This is good news, that more people in this age range are taking these medicines,” said Dr. Daniel Jones, president of the American Heart Association.

Still, he said many more people should be on the drugs that lower cholesterol or blood pressure and which have been shown to reduce risks for heart attack and stroke.

The new data, from prescription benefit manager Medco Health Solutions, indicate the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs among people aged 20 to 44, while still low, jumped 68 percent over a six-year period.

The rate rose from 2.5 percent in 2001 to just over 4 percent in 2006 among Medco customers. That means roughly 4.2 million Americans in that age group are now taking cholesterol medicines.

Meanwhile, the use of blood-pressure medicines increased 21 percent, from about 7 percent of 20- to 44-year-olds in 2001 to over 8 percent in 2006. That translates into about 8.5 million Americans in that age group taking drugs to lower their blood pressure.

“It was a surprise to us,” said Dr. Robert Epstein, chief medical officer at Franklin Lakes, N.J.-based Medco. “Maybe the fact that we’re seeing more young people with high cholesterol and blood pressure is indicative of the epidemic of obesity and overweight that we’re seeing in this country.”

Among people 65 and older, the use of blood-pressure drugs increased only 9.5 percent and the use of cholesterol drugs by 52 percent. That’s because half the seniors were already taking blood-pressure drugs and more than one in four were taking cholesterol drugs in 2001.

Dr. Howard Weintraub, the heart-disease-prevention expert at the American College of Cardiology, said he’s “thrilled” by the dramatic increase, which he says is tied to requests from patients with “a brand new sense of urgency” and referrals from other doctors to his private practice.

“If you wait until a heart attack or stroke, it’s a little bit late,” Weintraub said.

He and Epstein both said patients with problems should first work with their doctors on lifestyle changes — more exercise, a better diet and weight loss. But Weintraub said many people need medication to achieve and maintain the ever-lower levels of blood pressure and cholesterol that experts now recommend.

However, Dr. John LaRosa, president of SUNY Downstate Medical Center, said, “particularly for young people, lifestyle change is worth a try.”

Once patients start taking these medicines, they usually stay with them, and there are some side effects, LaRosa said.

“It’s amazing what [losing] five or 10 pounds will do” to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol levels, he said.

Federal health statistics show that while the percentage of people with high cholesterol has dropped overall in recent years, it has risen among younger people, especially those 20 to 34 years old.

ASSYAN, Iraq — Jebel Semroot is a dusty heap of rocks plowed and grazed by tough farmers and tougher goats. But this hill surrounding the village of Assyan, where Dallas-based Hunt Oil Co. hopes to drill next year, could have hundreds of millions of barrels of oil trapped beneath it.

Chief Executive Ray Hunt flew to Iraq in September to sign an exploration agreement covering Jebel Semroot with Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government.

Trouble is, Jebel Semroot isn’t in Kurdish territory. If Hunt Oil drills in these rocks, the company will be helping the Kurds absorb lands in Nineveh province that were historically Kurdish but are still claimed by Iraq’s Arab Sunnis.

The deal has already drawn a warning from a group of Sunni clerics who sympathize with insurgents battling U.S. and Iraqi forces.

“Those involved in such contracts will pay the price sooner or later,” warned the Association of Muslim Scholars.

While reining in their ambitions just short of independence, the Kurds are moving to expand their territory, take charge of their oil and insulate themselves in a hostile neighborhood. They are looking to Hunt Oil and other investors to help them get free of the violence and political paralysis of Baghdad. And they want to do it before U.S. troops leave Iraq.

Kurdish leaders are pushing before year’s end to add the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other disputed regions like northern Nineveh to the three provinces of the Kurdistan Regional Government in the essentially autonomous region.

They lobbied successfully for a U.S. Senate resolution in October that says Iraq’s regions should be self-governing, with Baghdad in charge of little more than foreign policy and national security.

They are wooing foreign businesses with tax holidays and other incentives. They have attracted oil companies from France, Norway, Turkey and Canada with exploration deals worth more than $500 million.

And they’ve granted an oil concession to Hunt Oil, a U.S. company close to the White House, in territory that is not officially theirs.

Kurdish leaders say they realize that independence would fracture Iraq and alarm neighboring countries. They say autonomy, however, could point the way to a “soft partition” of Iraq that would give each of the country’s three main ethnic groups (Kurds, Arab Sunnis and Shiites) enough self-determination to live together without civil war.

Baghdad and the Bush administration prefer a stronger central government. State Department officials say the Hunt deal faces legal uncertainties over whether regional or national oil legislation should prevail — even though a national oil law has yet to be enacted.

The officials also say the deal could undermine the Iraqi government and possibly provoke more violence over the loss of oil-rich territories that Arab Sunnis regard as theirs. Another fear among U.S. analysts is that autonomy among Iraq’s main ethnic and religious groups would lead to an oil-rich Shiite state in the south that would become a satellite of Iran.

Many, including officials with other oil companies in Iraq, find it hard to believe that President Bush and Ray Hunt, a longtime supporter, did not talk about this deal before it was signed, or that the Kurdistan Regional Government chose to award a concession to the U.S. company without paying much attention to its political connections with the White House.

Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

Bush said at a news conference that the Hunt Oil deal in Iraq was a complete surprise. Hunt said he has not talked about it with Bush or anyone else in the U.S. government, either before it was signed Sept. 8 or since.

Hunt said he could not discuss the work of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, adding that the information used by the company in deciding to explore for oil in Iraq was “100 percent in the public domain.”

Companies helping the Kurds look for oil will now play an important role in Kurdish foreign policy. They could win the Kurds allies in getting their oil out to world markets. They could also gain protection for the Kurds from neighbors like Turkey angered by Kurdish guerrillas and Kurdish steps toward economic and political independence.

“If people want Iraq to stay united, this is the way to go,” said Falah Bashir, director of foreign relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government. “We need an opportunity to open up to the outside world, not to have all the power in Baghdad.”

Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani has called the Hunt Oil contract “illegal” and said any oil found in such deals could not be exported. He has championed a dominant role in the development of Iraq’s oil reserves for the national oil company, with foreign companies kept on the periphery.

Iraq has more oil than all but two or three other countries in the world. The three provinces that make up the Kurdistan Regional Government, however, have only about 1 percent of the country’s proven reserves. If the Kurds can add the super-giant Kirkuk field and other prospective areas like Jebel Semroot, Kurdistan could start to look like Libya, Nigeria or even Russia.

Other companies drilling for oil in Kurdish provinces have already found healthy fields. DNO, a Norwegian company, has developed a field called Tawke in far northern Iraq near the borders of Turkey and Syria that Ashti Hawrami, Kurdistan’s minister of natural resources, estimates could produce 50,000 barrels a day next year.

A larger field called Taq Taq — jointly owned by Genel Enerji of Turkey and Addax Petroleum International of Canada — contains 2 billion barrels of high-quality oil and might produce as much as 330,000 barrels a day by the end of 2008.

The Taq Taq field was initially discovered when Saddam Hussein was in power. As his forces retreated from the region under the U.S. no-fly zone, they seeded the area with land mines to keep the Kurds from developing it.

The Taq Taq and Tawke fields are both within the three Kurdish provinces that constitute the Kurdish Regional Government.

The 800-square-kilometer Hunt Oil exploration block is another matter.

Saddam kicked the Kurdish farmers and herders of Assyan off Jebel Semroot in the 1970s and 1980s as part of his Arabization campaign.

When Saddam’s forces retreated to the south, Assyan’s former residents moved back. Jebel Semroot was on the Green Line separating Kurdish and Iraqi forces, and parts of the hill are still covered in landmines, Assyan residents say.

It’s not the first time that Hunt Oil has faced competing sovereignty claims in the Middle East. The company discovered oil in Yemen in 1985 after signing an exploration contract with the government of Yemen. But then Ray Hunt received a letter from Saudi Arabia claiming that the discovery had been made on land controlled by Saudi Arabia. Hunt Oil ultimately prevailed and the discovery was acknowledged to be in Yemen.

Hunt said he went to Baghdad on two or three occasions during Saddam’s rule to look into exploration deals there. All of Hunt’s visits to Iraq occurred during the time that Iraq was at war with Iran and when U.S. policy tilted toward Iraq to keep Iran from winning. Hunt said the discussions abruptly stopped when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The Kurds have waited years for a new federal oil law. Hawrami sees a power play under way by the federal Oil Ministry, which has tried to monopolize Iraq’s oil industry for the Iraqi National Oil Company and exclude foreign oil companies from production-sharing agreements.

As drafts of the agreed compromise legislation changed under the Oil Ministry’s influence, the Kurds began writing their own oil legislation, which was approved by the Kurdistan National Assembly in August.

Hawrami said the Kurdish law recognizes the revenue-sharing arrangement between Kurdistan and Baghdad, which gives 17 percent of national oil revenues to Kurdistan and the rest to Baghdad to be divided as other Iraqi politicians see fit.

Getting the oil from Kurdistan to world markets won’t be easy. Two pipelines connect the giant Kirkuk field with Turkey’s large Ceyhan oil terminal on the Mediterranean Sea. The lines have the capacity to export 1.6 million barrels of oil a day, but hundreds of sabotage attacks by Iraqi insurgents have stopped flows for most of the past four years.