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1er décembre 2004

Reuters, December 1st, 2004

Five Top PKK Members Guned Down In Mosul

TUNCELI - Five top members of the Kurdish group that led a 15-year separatist revolt in southeast Turkey were gunned down in northern Iraq, in a major blow to the organisation, a Turkish military official said on Wednesday.

The attack by unidentified gunmen on the members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) near Mosul on Monday came as the rebels face growing pressure to leave their stronghold in northern Iraq following last year’s U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The assailants opened fire on a vehicle carrying the PKK leaders, including Meysa Baki, an Iraqi Kurd who sat on the party’s ruling council.

She and two other women were among those killed. The occupants of the vehicle also included another Iraqi Kurd, two Iranian Kurds and one Turkish Kurd, the official said on condition of anonymity.

He said Turkish authorities had been closely tracking the moves of the group, which had been in Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, for secret talks with unknown parties.

"This killing is the biggest blow (to the PKK) in recent years," the official said.

Turkey sees northern Iraq as part of its sphere of influence, worried that greater autonomy for Kurds there in a post-invasion political deal could rekindle separatism among its own 10 million Kurds. Kurds also live in Iran and Syria.

Relations between NATO partners Turkey and the United States have been strained by Ankara’s demand that U.S. forces eliminate the PKK, which took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 in a conflict that has killed more than 30,000 people.

Washington, battling Arab insurgents elesewhere in Iraq, has been reluctant to overstretch itself by taking on the PKK as well, analysts say.

U.S. forces may also fear sparking instability in relatively peaceful northern Iraq, where Kurds served as close U.S. allies in the war that toppled former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

Southeastern Turkey enjoyed a relative lull in violence after PKK commander Abdullah Ocalan was captured and jailed in 1999 and most of his followers withdrew to northern Iraq.

But fighting between Turkish security forces and the PKK has intensified since June, when the rebels called off a unilateral truce. Turkish security officials say nearly 2,000 rebels have crossed back into Turkey this year.