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DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, June 17 (AFP) - 17h20 -
Kurdish rebels in Turkey will not lay down their
arms as long as they are the targetted by military
operations, a senior rebel commander was quoted as
saying Friday, as renewed violence in the mainly
Kurdish southeast claimed four more lives.
"Turkey's policies are dragging it to a very
dangerous point," Murat Karayilan, a leading member
of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' (PKK), said in
remarks quoted on the web site of the pro-Kurdish
MHA news agency.
"If it is not prevented, the atmosphere of
confrontation will escalate and surpass even the
1992-1993 period," he said, referring to the peak
years in PKK's campaign for Kurdish self-rule in
southeastern Turkey.
Karayilan was commenting on appeals issued this week
by Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals and politicians
for an unconditional end to PKK armed action.
"When there is an armed confrontation, you cannot
ask (only) one of the sides to lay down the arms.
You have to ask both," he said. "The (military)
operations should stop in order for the arms to fall
silent."
In the latest violence, two soldiers were killed and
four injured when their vehicle hit a landmine
planted on a rural road in Hakkari province by
suspected PKK militants, security sources in
Diyarbakir, the central city of the southeast, said.
In a separate incident, two rebels were killed in a
firefight with the army during a security sweep in
the province of Van, Anatolia news agency reported.
Karayilan recalled a PKK announcement earlier this
month that the group was ready for a new ceasefire,
but charged that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan's government did nothing to encourage such a
move.
He also condemned Ankara's pressure on the United
States to crack down on PKK militants hiding in the
mountains of neighboring northern Iraq since 1999
when, following the capture of its leader Abdullah
Ocalan, the group abandoned its claim for statehood
and declared a unilateral ceasefire.
The PKK called off the truce on June 1, 2004 saying
that reforms undertaken by Ankara to expand Kurdish
freedoms were insufficient, ending a period of
relative calm in the impoverished southeast.
Clashes between the army and the rebels have since
intensified and the PKK has been blamed for a series
of deadly landmine explosions and bomb attacks.
Karayilan asserted that the PKK was no longer
fighting for an independent state.
"The Kurds do not wish to change the borders," he
said. "They want equality and their natural rights
stemming from being a people and a community."
The Kurdish conflict has claimed some 37,000 lives
since the PKK took up arms in 1984.
The European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join,
has also expressed concern over the escalating
tensions and urged Ankara to take measures to curb
the unrest.
AFP
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