Baghad Sends Team to Discuss Northe

[kurdeng at aps.nl]

Subject: Baghad Sends Team to Discuss Northern Iraq and UN Embargo


      ANKARA, Oct 25 (Reuter) - Iraqi deputy foreign minister Saad
Abdel-Majid al-Faisal met his Turkish opposite number Onur Oymen on
Wednesday for talks focusing on Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and a U.N.
embargo on Baghdad, the foreign ministry said.

    ``They met today and the Iraqi delegation is due to meet the Foreign
Minister Coskun Kirca late today or Thursday,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman
Nurettin Nurkan told Reuters.

    Nurkan said the Iraqi and Turkish delegations discussed bilateral
issues, focusing on northern Iraq and the United Nations embargo imposed on
Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. He gave no further details.

    Both Ankara and Baghdad are concerned at instability in the three
northern provinces of Iraq, controlled by Iraqi Kurds under Western air
protection since the end of the Gulf War, as Kurdish militias fight to
settle longstanding feuds.

    Iraq wants the mandate of the allied air force, which Turkey votes on
every six months, to be terminated. Nurkan said the matter was for
parliament to decide, and that Ankara could give the visiting delegation no
promises.

    The warring Iraqi Kurds have recently been drawn to the negotiating
table with U.S.-sponsored talks in Dublin, but one militia is now fighting
the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which launches attacks on
Turkey from bases in the area.

    More than 18,000 people have been killed in Turkey in the PKK's
11-year-old fight for Kurdish independence or autonomy.

    Nurkan said Turkey, which mounted a 35,000-man six-week military
incursion into the region in March, was still staging small-scale attacks
against the PKK there.

    ``But there is no question of a wide-ranging operation inside Iraq at
the moment,'' he said.

    Emergency Rule Governor Unal Erkan, based in Diyarbakir, told Reuters
that troops had staged an air attack on PKK targets in northern Iraq on
Tuesday.

    ``We sometimes launch air operations against the terrorists, who escape
from the attacks of the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party) and settle near
our borders -- there was one bombing raid on Tuesday,'' he said.

    The KDP, which shares power with a rival militia in northern Iraq, said
on Monday it had launched a big drive against the final PKK stronghold in
the rugged Khwakurk district near Iraq's border with Iran in an operation
begun on Sunday.

    In Turkey, the emergency rule governor's office said troops had killed
18 PKK rebels in separate clashes in the provinces of Diyarbakir, Bitlis,
Tunceli and Batman.


Turkish Unions Hopeful for Swift End to Strike ANKARA, Oct 25 (Reuter) -
Turkish labour unions are hopeful that a five-week-old public workers' pay
strike that has rocked the political arena will be solved soon, a labour
confederation spokesman said on Wednesday.

    ``Everything is going well. With a bit of nudging, this is going to be
finalised,'' Yildirim Koc, a senior official from the labour confederation
Turk-Is, told Reuters.

    ``We held talks yesterday, and we are expecting a call from the labour
minister about resuming those talks later today,'' Koc said. ``Things could
be solved in today's meetings.''

    The labour strike by up to 335,000 public workers began on September 20
over an initial government pay rise offer of 5.4 percent for 1995. Annual
inflation is expected to hit 70 percent.

    The strike was influential in Prime Minister Tansu Ciller's 10-day
minority government being toppled in a vote of confidence on October 15.

    After losing the confidence vote, Ciller has come full circle to revive
her right-left coalition, which collapsed the day the strike began when she
resigned in a rift with the leader of her social democrat partners.

    The government has since raised its pay rise offer, but Koc declined to
give the latest figures.

    The Anatolian news agency said the government and Turk-Is disagreed
mainly over percentage rises for the second year.

    At its height, the strike idled ports, railways and sugar production,
and cost Turkey $10 million a day in exports alone.

    Around 200,000 workers are still on strike after the government ordered
workers in some key sectors back to work.

European Human Rights Commission To Hear Kurdish Paper Case
      ANKARA, Oct 25 (Reuter) - The European Human Rights Commission has
agreed to hear a case by a pro-Kurdish Istanbul daily that complained
Turkish authorities harassed it and forced it to shut down, the paper's
lawyer said on Wednesday.

    ``The commission has accepted the case by Ozgur Gundem newspaper
against Turkey...which has acted in a biased manner against the paper to
block its freedom of expression and right to information,'' attorney Osman
Ergin told Reuters.

    Ankara denounced the decision to hear the case, calling it a misuse of
European human rights laws.

    Members of the European Parliament, expected to vote in December on
customs union with Turkey, want Ankara to amend or scrap elements of a
special anti-terror law, used to jail scores of people for writings and
speeches on the Kurdish issue.

    Prime Minister Tansu Ciller's government on Monday put forward a bill
to parliament to soften the anti-terrorism law's tough article 8.

    But Turkish officials said the Ozgur Gundem case was about combating
``terrorism,'' not about free speech or other human rights.

    ``The decision of the commission on a case closely tied with the
support of terrorism through the press will be...proof of just how
principled and objective a stance the monitoring bodies in Strasbourg take
towards the fight against terrorism,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Nurettin
Nurkan told a news briefing.

    Ozgur Gundem shut down almost two years after its May 1992 founding
because of closure orders issued by an Istanbul state security court for
publishing ``separatist propaganda'' and encouraging Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK) guerrillas.

    Gundem's successor Ozgur Ulke and the latest pro-Kurdish daily Yeni
Politika shut down after a court deemed them to be essentially the same as
Ozgur Gundem.

    A Reuters correspondent, Aliza Marcus, has been charged by an Istanbul
security court under Turkey's laws on the freedom of expression for an
article that appeared in Ozgur Ulke under her byline. She faces up to three
years in jail.



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