PKK refuses to disarm without a settlement

Senior Kurdish rebel repeats group’s calls for autonomy

Photo: The PKK’s Murad Karialan (2nd left) at a press conference Wednesday.

By Yahya Barzanji - The Associated Press

QANDIL MOUNTAIN RANGE, Iraq - A senior leader of a Kurdish separatist group operating in Turkey said the group's guerrillas will not disarm without a «political project» that fulfills their calls for autonomy.

The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, invited a group of journalists based in northern Iraq to meet with party officials late on Wednesday at an undisclosed location in the rugged, isolated Qandil Mountain in Iraq's northeast corner where they are based.

«We will remain in the Qandil Mountains area and any demand to disarm without a political project is tantamount to suicide for us,» Murad Karialan, the PKK's co-president, told reporters late on Wednesday.

Karialan said the group «will not repeat the mistake» of offering an unconditional ceasefire.

The PKK called a unilateral ceasefire after the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in 1999, but resumed fighting in June 2004, accusing Turkey of not responding in kind and refusing rebel calls for dialogue.

The group has been fighting for autonomy in Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast, a conflict that has left some 37,000 dead since clashes began in 1984.

But in recent months, the conflict has escalated after the group, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, renewed its offensive against the Turkish military, killing at least 15 Turks in the southeast in the first half of July. The PKK charges that the Turkish military has been shelling villages in Qandil Mountain, killing civilians and displacing thousands of villagers.

Talking to reporters in Iraq, Karialan urged the United States to intervene.

«We respect the American calls for disarmament, but the Americans must intervene to come up with a political solution for the Kurdish problem in Turkey,» he said, sitting in a room plastered with photos of Ocalan and PKK flags. «The Turkish military deployment on the border should stop, the attacks against us should come to an end.»

He added that if the Turkish government wanted to end the crisis, it should «show signs of goodwill» by at least improving the conditions of Ocalan's detention and starting negotiations.

Last month, the Turkish prime minister said his country's military was moving forward in drafting plans to send forces into Iraq to clear out the bases of the Kurdish guerillas. But he also added that officials were holding talks with the United States and Iraq in an attempt to defuse tensions.

A Turkish cross-border operation would likely inflame tensions between Turkey and the United States and destabilize one of the few calm areas of Iraq.

Karialan said his 6,000 fighters will not leave the strategic border area, and that if they did, it will be taken over by Ansar al-Islam, a radical Islamic group linked to al-Qaida.

«We should be thanked for maintaining security in this rugged, porous border area that's very difficult to control,» he said, explaining that Ansar al-Islam has been imposing a strict brand of Islam on villages along the border with Iran which served as their base.

«We are not terrorists... we're preventing international terrorism from infiltrating Kurdistan and Iraq,» he added.

TUNCELI (Reuters) - Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish guerrilla positions in the Iraqi border region earlier this week, military sources said yesterday.

Several thousand members of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) are believed to be hiding in the mountains of mainly Kurdish northern Iraq, from where they slip across the border to attack Turkish police, troops and other targets.

Turkey has repeatedly warned it has the right under international law to conduct cross-border operations if Iraq and the United States fail to crack down on the PKK rebels.

Military sources in southeast Turkey told Reuters two or three warplanes had bombed the Iraqi border region on Wednesday evening after PKK forces were identified in the area.

The sources, who declined to be named, said the action was not significant and it was not clear what damage the bombing had caused. The PKK has not reported any casualties.

The bombing occurred along the borders of Hakkari and Sirnak provinces and it was not clear if any of the bombs actually landed in Iraqi territory, the sources said.