Bonni Network

Thursday October 24 6:03 PM EDT

U.S. to Convene Kurdish Talks Next Week

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - The United States pressed ahead with an initiative to reconcile two feuding Kurdish groups in Northern Iraq Thursday, announcing it would chair direct talks between them in Turkey next week.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said a U.S-brokered cease-fire between the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) appeared to be generally holding since it came into effect at midnight Iraqi time Wednesday.

He told a regular State Department news conference that Robert Pelletreau, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, would oversee talks between the two Kurdish groups in the middle of the week.

Pelletreau, who is now visiting the Gulf after mediating between the two sides in Turkey earlier this week, would return to Ankara this weekend and prepare for the talks with officials of the two Kurdish groups.

"Both will be represented at the table with him and with representatives of the governments of Turkey and the United Kingdom," Burns said. Britain and Turkey, a NATO ally that borders Iraq, have helped bring the two factions together.

Massoud Barzani's KDP, which was helped by the forces of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein when it took control of much of the Iraqi Kurdish region in September, has threatened to call on Saddam's help again in his struggle with the PUK.

The PUK has had backing from Iran and the United States feared the two months of conflict could draw in the two regional powers and further destabilize the Middle East.

Iraqi newspapers have urged the Kurds to abandon the U.S. effort and instead come to Baghdad for peace talks.

Pelletreau, with help from Turkish and British diplomats, secured the cease-fire after separate talks with Barzani and the PUK's Jalal Talabani in Turkey this week.

Witnesses near the town of Degala in Iraqi Kurdistan said the two sides traded shots after the PUK launched an attack Wednesday morning, but fighting halted in the afternoon.

"There were some reports of sporadic fighting but that may have been a case of some of the forces ... not getting the word. It appears now the cease-fire is taking hold," Burns told a regular news briefing.

"We have hopes that these talks might lead the KDP and the PUK to maintain the cease-fire and to decide together on some form of political reconciliation so that the situation in Northern Iraq can be more stable and more peaceful," he said.

Burns said it was unclear how long the talks would last and they would have to be taken "on a day by day basis." He said Washington had employed "a lot of diplomatic muscle in the last week or so" to get the talks going.

Euro MPs vote to freeze EU aid to Turkey 12:53 Oct 24, 1996

STRASBOURG, France, Oct 24 (Reuter) - The European Parliament, angered by Turkey's human rights record, voted on Thursday to block hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to help Ankara set up a customs union with the European Union. In a first reading of the 1997 EU budget, the 626-member parliament voted to focus aid on human rights organisations, independent aid agencies and measures to promote democracy. ``We want to ensure that civil society and process of democracy in Turkey is not hampered,'' Detlev Samland, head of the parliament's budgetary committee, told a news conference. Turkey dismissed the vote. ``Turkey is not affected by these kind of things,'' the state-run Anatolian news agency quoted Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Onur Oymen as saying. Oymen said the EU aid was minimal compared to Turkey's export earnings. The EU planned to set aside 375 million Ecus ($470 million) between 1996 and 2000 to help Turkey put in place its customs union with the 15-member bloc. The customs union offers Turkey lucrative trade openings. Parliament approved the creation of the customs union last December only after the Ankara government had given explicit guarantees that it would take positive action on human rights, democratisation, Cyprus and the plight of the Kurds. But the Euro MPs complained that Turkey had failed to honour these commitments, saying Ankara had created tension by ``provocations in the Aegean Sea and Cyprus and aggression in northern Iraq.'' On Thursday, Euro MPs strongly condemned the fourth killing in recent months of a unarmed Greek Cypriot by Turkish forces and called on Ankara to respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Greek Cypriots. EU External Relations Commissioner Hans Van Den Broek also expressed grave concern about Turkey's actions on Monday.In addition, the parliament voted to review substantial financing for Turkey from the EU's MEDA programme, through which up to 842 million Ecus was envisaged for the bloc's Mediterranean neighbours in 1997. `Before projects are allocated to Turkey they should be approved by parliament,'' Samland said. At the moment it is impossible to say how much of MEDA funds for Turkey would be blocked, the German Social Democrat added. The parliament will have a second and final reading of the 1997 EU budget in December.