TURKEY:The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), whose bases in northern Iraq Turkey has threatened to attack, said yesterday it was open to dialogue that could lead to it downing arms, a news agency close to the rebels reported.
Turkey, like the US and EU, condemns the PKK as a terrorist group and has always refused any dialogue with PKK guerrillas.
It had no immediate response to the party's statement, carried by the Firat news agency.
Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan said this week after talks with US president George W Bush that the army would go ahead with an incursion against PKK militants in Iraq.
"We are open to dialogue on starting a process that would totally exclude weapons based on a political project," the PKK statement said.
Turkey has stationed some 100,000 troops on the Iraq border and threatened to launch an offensive against some 3,000 rebels who use northern Iraq as a base for attacks in Turkey if nothing is done to limit their activities.
The PKK took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeast of the country. Almost 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
The PKK statement said a Turkish cross-border operation would only be an attempt to affect the status of oil-rich and multi-ethnic Kirkuk, which Iraqi Kurds want included in their autonomous northern Iraq region.
A referendum is scheduled for this year to determine the status of the city. But Arab residents and Turkmen - Turks' ethnic kin - want it to be delayed or abandoned.
The PKK said that unilateral ceasefires they had announced in the past had failed to halt the conflict, emphasising the importance of a political solution.
The separatist group announced a ceasefire in 1999 after its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was imprisoned. This was broken in 2003 when fighting broke out between the Turkish military and the PKK. Another ceasefire from 2006 is officially still in place.
Turkey's top general yesterday appeared to respond to calls from the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party for autonomy in southeast Turkey, in his speech marking the anniversary of the death of Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey's revered founder.
"If our [ state's] unitary structure and fundamental values of the regime are confronting some threats today, we should know that deviation from Ataturk's nationalism has started," the text of Gen Yasar Buyukanit's speech said.
Despite Mr Erdogan's threat to attack the PKK in Iraq, Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said this week he believed the threat of a major Turkish offensive had diminished.
Washington does not want Turkey to send thousands of troops across the border, fearing it could destabilise northern Iraq and cause a bigger regional crisis, but has not opposed limited military strikes. -