Turkey asks Iraq to act against Kurdish parties with alleged links to rebels

ANKARA, Jan 19 (AFP) - Turkey has asked Iraqi authorities to launch legal proceedings against two Kurdish parties, believed to be linked to Turkish Kurd rebels who have been fighting a bloody war against Ankara, officials said Wednesday.
About 5,000 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a 15-year armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey, are estimated to have found refuge across the border in northern Iraq prior to the US-led occupation of the country in March 2003.
Foreign ministry spokesman Namik Tan said the "terrorist organization" -- Ankara's traditional description of the PKK -- was now "making efforts to politicize in Iraq by using some Iraqi citizens whose support it has."
PKK's efforts include plans "to insert into the Iraqi national system some political formations that it can use in the future," he told a news conference.
"We have asked the Iraqi interim government to launch legal proceedings against two parties which we consider as linked to the terrorist organization.
"We have handed over to the Iraqi administration the related information we have and we will continue to closely watch the issue," Tan said.
The spokesman did not name the two parties.
A foreign ministry official contacted by AFP named them as the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party and the Democratic Construction Party, adding that they were both registered as participants in the January 30 election in Iraq.
Turkey worries that increased political powers for the Kurds in northern Iraq may encourage them to break away from Baghdad in the future.
Such a prospect, it fears, may fan separatist sentiment among Kurds in adjoining southeastern Turkey and plunge the region into a new turmoil.
Ankara also demands that northern Iraq be purged from the PKK, but has so far failed to win a pledge for military action from the United States.
Part of the militants have reportedly infiltrated Turkey to engage in renewed violence, after the PKK, now also known as KONGRA-GEL, called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire with Ankara on June 1.
The group, considered a terrorist organization also by the United States and the European Union, has since been blamed for a series of deadly attacks in southeast Turkey as well as the bombing of two hotels in Istanbul in August, which left two dead and 11 injured.
The Kurdish conflict in Turkey has claimed some 37,000 lives.

01/19/2005 15:43 GMT - AFP