German intelligence meets Kurdish P

[kurd-l at burn.ucsd.edu]

From: Arm The Spirit <ats at etext.org>
Subject: German intelligence meets Kurdish PKK head

German intelligence meets Kurdish PKK head

    BONN, Nov 25 (Reuter) - An aide to Chancellor Helmut Kohl
confirmed on Saturday that a top German domestic intelligence
official had held talks with the leader of the banned Kurdish
separatist PKK in the last few months.
    At the same time, police in the southern town of Ulm
detained some 70 Kurds during an unauthorised demonstration,
some of them suspected activists of the Kurdistan Workers' Party
(PKK), and confiscated weapons and PKK insignia.
    Bernd Schmidbauer, Kohl's intelligence service coordinator,
said the weekly Focus was correct in reporting a meeting between
an official of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution
(BfV) and PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
    He told Reuters at a meeting of Kohl's Christian Democrats
in Ravensburg that he assumed the talks had taken place, and
that such contacts served the interest of ordinary people.
    Focus said the meeting was held in Syria. It said Ocalan
indicated in response to BfV urging that the PKK would end its
campaign of violence against Turkish targets in Germany.
    Ocalan said the PKK, fighting a guerrilla war for
independence or autonomy in southeastern Turkey, wanted to be
recognised as a political force, Focus reported.
    The BfV is responsible for gathering intelligence on
political extremism and subversion within Germany's borders.
    Germany banned the PKK in 1993, accusing it of masterminding
several series of spectacular attacks on Turkish consulates,
shops, travel agencies and social clubs in Germany and across
northwestern Europe.
    Despite the ban, authorities say the PKK has continued to
organise attacks on Turkish properties across Germany to back
its autonomy campaign and protest against what it says is Bonn's
military assistance for Ankara's action against the Kurds.
    There are more than 400,000 Kurds in Germany -- the biggest
community outside their homeland -- among a Turkish population
of some two million.
    Police in Ulm used batons to break up an unauthorised
demonstration by around 200 Kurds who slipped through a police
cordon to protest against conditions in a Kurdish refugee camp
on the Turkish-Iraqi border.
    City authorities had banned the march because they believed
it was intended to show support for the PKK.