mainstream news 15 Nov.

[kurdeng at aps.nl]

ANKARA, Nov 15 (Reuter) - Turkey's interior minister on Wednesday announced
tight security measures for general elections set for December 24, which remain
under threat of cancellation after a constitutional challange by a group of
MPs.

"Our ministry...is planning a series of measures with all its power to prevent
even the smallest incident or action," Interior Minister Teoman Unusan told
reporters before starting a meeting with senior military representatives and
bureaucrats.

He did not specify what kind of security measures would be taken but said
authorities were trying to keep roads and communications open to facilitate
polling in eastern and southeastern villages, where winter is harsh.

Kurdish rebels have been active in the southeast for 11 years but have never
managed to seriously disrupt voting. A Kurdish MP was shot dead by unknown
gunmen in the southeastern city of Batman in 1993.

Unusan said he would head meetings with governors in five different regions and
ask them to report what kind of measures they had taken.

Turkey's Constitutional Court last week began reviewing a challenge to the
elections by 93 deputies who handed in a petition on November 3 asking for the
voting to be delayed, saying that voting lists could not be updated in time.


ANKARA, Turkey (Reuter) - An influential Western human rights group Wednesday
criticized Kurdish rebels for targeting civilians in their separatist war in
southeast Turkey.

The Human Rights Watch/Helsinki group said the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
had not kept promises by its leader Abdullah Ocalan to abide by the Geneva
Conventions on conduct in conflicts.

"The PKK forces continue to summarily execute so-called 'state supporters',
kill civilians in attacks on villages ... take hostages among journalists and
tourists and plant bombs in non-military targets," the group said in a
statement.

More than 18,000 people have died in the PKK's 11-year fight for autonomy or
independence in southeast Turkey.

"Fighting is marked by abusive behavior on both sides," Human Rights
Watch/Helsinki said. It said more than 2,600 villages and hamlets had been
forcibly evacuated by both sides, most of them emptied by the government
counterinsurgency campaign.

BONN, Nov 15 (Reuter) - German prosecutors said on Wednesday they had charged
three supporters of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) with attempting
to murder a party critic.

Prosecutors accused two women, whom they identified as Azime Y. and Meryem Y.,
of being leading figures in the PKK and of ordering a three-strong death squad
to kill the fellow Kurd in the northern city of Bremen in October last year.

The victim, Fuat Karaarslan, was a friend of Kurdish dissident Selim Curukkaya,
a critic of the PKK leadership.

The third suspect, a man identified as Sait B., is accused of luring the victim
to the would-be assassins. They allegedly beat him with a hammer and a baseball
bat, and stabbed him four times. An operation saved his life.

Prosecutors have also charged the two women with belonging to the PKK which is
banned in Germany. The man has also been charged with supporting the
organisation.

The PKK is also banned in Turkey, where it has been waging a struggle against
the authorities for autonomy or independence in the southeastern part of the
country.

Police have blamed the PKK for a string of arson attacks on dozens of Turkish
properties in Germany.

(7) EU Info Memo Press Release

Green Group President Claudia Roth Comments on the Sakharov Prize:

Award to Leyla Zana is an act of friendship toward Turkish democracy

Brussels, 9 November 1995. Green Group President Claudia Roth hailed today's
selection of Leyla Zana, imprisoned Kurdish member of the Turkish Parliament,
as "a significant act of friendship toward all those in Turkey who are
striving for democracy, human rights and a peaceful settlement of the Kurdish
problem."

"This award shows that Europe's democratically elected representatives consider
Turkey more than simply a trade partner or a strategically located NATO
member," she said. "We understand Turkey in terms of its people and their
aspirations for democracy and civil peace."

"This human dimension of partnership must take precedence over all others,"
she said. "This means that Members of the European Parliament cannot be
expected to ratify the Customs Unions with Turkey so long as their colleagues
in Turkey are imprisoned for having exercized their most basic political
rights," Ms Roth stressed.

Leyla Zana, elected to the Turkish Parliament from Diyarbakir, is the only
woman among four members of the banned Democracy Party (DEP) currently serving
long prison sentences on charges of supporting Kurdish separatism, for having
urged peaceful settlement of the Kurdish problem that has plunged much of
Turkey into civil war.

Her husband, Mehdi Zana, the freely elected mayor of Diyarbakir, capital of
Turkish Kurdistan, deposed, tortured and imprisoned by military putschists in
1980, is currently serving a four-year prison sentence for his 1992 testimony
on Turkish human rights violations to the European Parliament. Already last
year, the Green Group proposed Ms Zana and her husband Mehdi Zana as joint
candidates for the Sakharov Prize.

(8) EU Session News Press Release

EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee (B4-1419/95) Wednesday, 15 November -
Parliament has passed a resolution to unblock the work of the EU-Turkey Joint
Parliamentary Committee, which was frozen in September 1994. The resolution
states that recent events in Turkey demonstrate the need for a dialogue with
that country regarding Parliament's demand for democratisation. The vote was
354 in favour to 46 against with 20 abstentions.

Iraqi Kurds say they besiege Turkish Kurd bases

ANKARA, Nov 15 (Reuter) - Iraqi Kurds said on Wednesday they had mobilised
thousands of troops to flush out the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
rebels from their remaining bases in northern Iraq.

"On Tuesday, thousands of KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party) peshmerga moved
against the PKK's remaining bases in Nerwa and Rekan region...close to the
Turkish border," the KDP said in a statement from London.

"The operation is aimed at driving out PKK fighters from the region,
dismantling the group's guerrilla infrastructure and eliminating the PKK
terrorist threat to the local population."

The KDP, which shares power with a rival militia in Kurdish-controlled northern
Iraq, said its peshmerga guerrillas inflicted hundreds of casualties on the
PKK, cut off its supply roots and forced its militants to retreat to the
unpopulated Nerwa and Rekan region in more than two months of fighting.

It said it had dislodged the PKK from strategic mountain ranges on Tuesday.
There was no independent confirmation of the KDP claims.

A KDP spokesman told Reuters that the militia's leader Massoud Barzani had last
week asked PKK chief Abdullah Ocalan to visit him in northern Iraq for talks on
the fighting between the two groups that began in late August.

In a speech broadcast on Kurdish radio from his base in the northern Iraqi town
of Salahuddin, Barzani also called on Kurdish politicians and writers to attend
the meeting. Ocalan is believed to be living in Syria.

The Iraqi Kurds resumed U.S.-sponsored peace talks in northern Iraq on Monday
in a bid to end a 17-month feud that has split the area between rival militias,
the KDP said earlier.

A U.S. delegation, led by Robert Deutch, head of the State Department's North
Gulf Office, arrived on Sunday to mediate in the third round of a peace
settlement between the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), it said.

The rival groups have been battling for effective control of northern Iraq,
which is protected from Baghdad's forces by U.S.-led allied air power. Two
earlier rounds of talks held in Ireland, in August and September, yielded only
limited results.

Analysts say the PKK wants to set itself up as a third force in the region and
send a warning that only an agreement that takes the PKK into consideration
will be tolerated.

The PKK uses bases in northern Iraq in its fight for self-rule in southeast
Turkey. Turkish troops crossed into Iraq earlier this year in a bid to
eliminate PKK positions.


UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 (Reuter) - Turkey and the United Nations are still
negotiating rules on the rights of Turkish citizens attending or employed by
the world body at a global conference on cities, housing and homelessness in
June, U.N. officials and diplomats said.

The last major U.N. conference of the century, known as Habitat II on human
settlements, is scheduled in Istanbul from June 3-14 and billed as a global
effort to exchange ideas among governments, mayors, city planners and
scientists.

Turkey, according to U.N. sources, does not want immunity from prosecution for
its own citizens attending the conference as representatives of local
governments or private groups, or for those the United Nations hires for the
gathering.

U.N. chief spokesman Joe Sills said still under discussion were questions "of
privileges and immunities of Turkish citizens, both locally recruited staff
people and Turkish nationals made available by the government, as well as
Turkish participants, which would include non-governmental organisations."

The Turkish daily Milliyet said on Sunday the government fears the conference,
which will tackle issues such as housing and city planning, will be used for
pro-Kurdish propaganda.

Both Turkish and U.N officials have denied the conference was in jeopardy.
There is "every indication this will be worked out and the conference will go
ahead as scheduled," Sills said.

A Turkish diplomat told a General Assembly committee on Wednesday that the
paper was misinformed and that the process for completing an agreement was
going well.


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 * Origin: APS Amsterdam (aps.nl), bbs +31-20-6842147 (16:31/2.0)