PKK threatens Turkey with renewed warfare 

 DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Aug 18 (AFP) -  The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
 warned late on Friday that its rebels would re-launch their armed campaign against Turkey if
 Ankara failed to address the grievances of its large Kurdish community.

 "We do not want war. (But) if the process (to resolve the dispute) runs into a bottleneck, we will
 try every means, including using arms," warned senior PKK commander Murat Karayilan.

 He was speaking during a debate programme broadcast live on the pro-Kurdish satellite
 television channel, Medya-TV, to mark the 17th anniversary of the launch of PKK's armed
 campaign for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.

 Karayilan accused Turkey of ignoring Kurdish demands for greater cultural rights and continuing
 to pursue a campaign to annihilate the PKK, blocking any prospect of dialogue to resolve the
 dispute.

 He warned that PKK rebels would retaliate in self-defence if Turkish security forces continued to
 hunt them down.

 "If we take up our weapons and restart the war, it would not be like the previous one, but more
 intense and destructive," he said.

 Karayilan urged Turkey's Kurdish community to demonstrate in protest at Ankara's rejection of
 dialogue to settle the long-running conflict.

 The government has failed to introduce broadcasting and teaching in Kurdish despite increasing
 European Union pressure on Turkey, which is seeking to join the 15-nation EU.

 The PKK took up arms against Ankara on August 15, 1984, starting 15 years of bloody clashes
 which klled more than 36,000 people, most of them Kurdish rebels.

 In September 1999, the group said it would stop fighting Ankara and withdraw from Turkish
 territory to seek a peaceful resolution to Kurdish grievances.

 The statement followed a peace appeal from PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is on death row
 in a Turkish jail.

 Since then fighting has subsided and several thousand rebels have moved to the north of
 neighbouring Iraq.

 But the powerful Turkish military has played down the peace bid as a ploy, calling on the rebels
 to unconditionally surrender or face army guns.
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