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ISTANBUL, June 22 (AFP) - 18h52 - A group of 300
Kurdish intellectuals urged Ankara Wednesday to
grant amnesty to Kurdish rebels fighting the army in
Turkey's southeast to encourage them to lay down
arms and stop increasing bloodshed in the region.
The appeal came as two land-mine explosions, blamed
on rebels from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party
(PKK), killed a soldier and wounded three others.
"A general amnesty should be declared as part of a
solution to the conflict," former Kurdish
parliamentarian Ziya Yusuf Ekinci told reporters on
behalf of the group, the Anatolia news agency
reported.
The amnesty, he said, should include jailed PKK
leader Abdullah Ocalan.
The PKK has stepped up violence in the mainly
Kurdish southeast since calling off a five-year
unilateral ceasefire on June 1, 2004.
In the latest episode of violence, a soldier was
killed in the province of Batman when a land mine
planted by PKK militants exploded, the local
governor said.
In neighboring Siirt, three soldiers were wounded
when their vehicle ran on a remote-controlled land
mine, Siirt Governor Murat Yildirim told Anatolia,
adding that a security operation was under way in
the area.
The Kurdish conflict in Turkey has claimed about
37,000 lives, most of them between 1984 and 1999,
when the PKK waged a bloody campaign for Kurdish
self-rule in the region.
Ekinci's group also backed appeals issued last week
by leading Turkish and Kurdish politicians and
intellectuals to the PKK to unconditionally lay down
arms.
Ankara has in the past amnestied rebels, but the
measures produced disappointing results, mainly
because they contained conditions calling on the
militants to express repentance and provide
information about underground PKK activities and
excluded the group's leadership from their scope.
Only about 250 rebels turned themselves in under the
latest amnesty in 2003.
The PKK is estimated to have about 5,000 militants
in Turkey and in the mountains of neighbouring
northern Iraq.
AFP
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