PKK Chief Says Turkish PM Seeks Tal

[kurd-l at burn.ucsd.edu]

From: Arm The Spirit <ats at locust.cic.net>
Subject: PKK Chief Says Turkish PM Seeks Talks

PKK Chief Says Turkish PM Seeks Talks 

PARIS, Nov 20 (Reuter) - Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was quoted 
on Wednesday as saying Turkish Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan 
had contacted his movement for peace talks but the Turkish army was 
blocking a dialogue. 

Ocalan, leader of the radical Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), told the 
French daily Le Figaro: ``We are waging war to force Turkey to accept a 
political solution. Erbakan has contacted us. But the army is not 
following.'' 

He gave no details of the reported contacts. 

Ocalan said the PKK sought a federal solution involving Iraq, Iran and 
Turkey, with a federal parliament and a Kurdish parliament. The movement 
has waged an armed struggle against the Turkish state for the past 12 
years in which more than 20,000 people have been killed. 

Interviewed ``somewhere in the Middle East,'' he acknowledged that PKK 
guerrillas had wiped out several Kurdish villages accused of 
collaborating with the Turkish army and blamed it on power struggles 
among the rebels. 

``I'm against the killing of civilians. But it is a fact that some of 
these acts were carried out by guerrillas. They killed some of our own 
people. They are destroying what I am trying to build,'' Ocalan said. 

``I am the leader but I am not God. Sometimes I have more conflicts with 
members of my own party than with the enemy. They challenge my 
authority,'' he said. 

Ocalan was quoted as saying the PKK had 15,000 guerrillas in southeastern 
Turkey and northern Iraq, including 4,000 women. 

He said he had personally never been a fighter or lived with Kurdish 
guerrillas in the mountains. 

Ocalan said he opposed sexual relations between men and women guerrillas. 

``If we are not strict, we will never the give the Kurds a new 
personality. We must establish a new style of sexual relations between 
men and women,'' he said. 

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