Bonni Network

Leftist MP says Turkey rations food in province 11:36 Nov 08, 1996 EST

``As a result of the food embargo, which has been implemented by the state, our villagers are scattered all over the place,'' Deniz Baykal, leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP) and a former foreign minister, told a gathering in Tunceli town.

Turkish officials have denied any rationing of food in the province. Locals claim their food supplies have been curtailed since 1994.

Baykal said food shortages were hitting villagers more than the PKK. He did not say when restrictions on food started or how they were being implemented.

Turkey said on Friday guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) killed 17 people, including 12 members of an anti-rebel village militia. The security forces, it said, had killed 22 rebels.

Tunceli, one of 10 provinces under emergency rule, has been the scene of regular large-scale security operations against PKK rebels hiding in caves and woods in the mountains.

More than 21,000 people have died in the 12-year-old armed struggle between the PKK and the army in southeastern Turkey.

Now let us take a look at the negative aspects of Demirel's trip to Germany:

Mostly they have objections to Turkey fighting PKK terrorism. They think that Turkey has a natural right to do so. What they oppose is restrictions of human rights. Unfortunately Turkey has a very bad record in this area. The president saw with his own eyes the gravity of the situation.

Demirel gave Europe an important message to the effect that it should definitely be put on the record that Turkey had a right to become a full member of the European Union (EU). Unfortunately this message failed to bring about a favorable reaction.

There are two conditions for Turkey to be considered for full membership. These involve human rights and Cyprus. It has become apparent that the EU has no intention of taking any steps in that direction unless it sees favorable developments in those two areas.

It may be said that in the final count the visit turned out to be "very significant" for Demirel personally, and drew a "pessimistic picture" for Turkey.

A Deadly Silence On Iraq

Friday, November 8 1996; Page A31 The Washington Post

Rolf Ekeus and his courageous band of United Nations arms inspectors say it regularly and authoritatively: Saddam Hussein continues to hide missiles and chemical weapons in the Iraqi desert. Saddam continues to lie about Iraq's other weapons of mass destruction, and obstructs with impunity U.N. efforts to find out the full truth.

There is no mystery about what Saddam is doing, and Ekeus is close to figuring out exactly how he does it. The mystery is why the world acts so unconcerned about this deadly race against the clock, which suddenly ticks in Saddam's favor as international support for sanctions against Iraq weakens.

Iraq is important. It is the one country that the international community, through U.N. resolutions, has explicitly forbidden to develop weapons of mass destruction and to repress its own population. If the American president and other world leaders cannot build on that consensus and get Iraq right, they are not likely to get anything important right.

Just as the dismemberment of Ethiopia showed the impotence of the League of Nations and doomed that organization, failure in Iraq will fatally compromise the United Nations' authority.

That failure now looms. It is predictable, and therefore preventable. But the world's responsible powers sit by in silence, apparently distracted by domestic elections, economic problems at home or Boris Yeltsin's heart bypass operation.

Buoyed by his humiliating defeat of the CIA in northern Iraq in September, Saddam has now mounted a major push to wriggle free from U.N. control. Washington's weak response to the CIA defeat has encouraged Baghdad in the belief that the world is wearying of confronting Saddam and can be outwaited.

The Iraqi dictator is backtracking on the oil-for-food deal negotiated between Iraq and the U.N. this summer. In what one U.N. diplomat privately describes as "show stoppers," Iraq is now demanding effective control over U.N. inspectors who were to monitor distribution of food and medicine inside Iraq and over the funds generated by the limited oil sales the deal would allow.

The new Iraqi demands block badly needed relief for Iraq's suffering civilians. Saddam's political aims are for him more important than feeding his people: The oil sales were intended also to fund the U.N. Special Commission on weapons of mass destruction, which has become the most important lever of international control over Saddam's murderous ambitions.

Without the oil sales, the Special Commission will run out of operating money in January unless new sources of funding are found for its $3 million monthly budget.

Moreover, throughout this year the Iraqi army has ignored, harassed and usually refused to cooperate with the Special Commission's inspectors, who are tasked to discover and report whether Iraq is living up to its promises to rid itself of atomic, biological and chemical weapons, and the missiles that could deliver those weapons of mass destruction to neighboring countries.

The Iraqi resistance to inspections blatantly violates the U.N. resolutions that establish the cease-fire that ended the gulf war in 1991. The world community's response? Mild verbal reproof of Baghdad, and no action.

This unfolding crisis is laid out in spare, clear prose in an alarming report submitted to the U.N. Security Council in mid-October by Ekeus, the former Swedish diplomat who is the executive chairman of the Special Commission.

Over the past six months Ekeus has focused the inspections on what he calls "the structure of evasion and concealment" the Iraqis have used to hide at least a dozen Scud missiles, an unknown number of crude chemical warheads and material for "a full-scale biological warfare program, including weaponization."

Ekeus's effort to penetrate Saddam's weapons concealment program has brought his inspectors eyeball-to-eyeball with special Iraqi Republican Guard units that run these illegal operations. They were recently seen moving what they said were "concrete pillars," but which, Ekeus noted "by their dimensions and shape, resembled Scud missiles." The "pillars" disappeared.

Ekeus's refusal to shade the truth about Iraq has been a vital factor in keeping U.N. economic sanctions in place and thereby keeping Saddam from significantly rebuilding a deadly arsenal of unconventional weapons.

Washington needs to reaffirm quickly and publicly its political and financial support for the Special Commission, and to promise that Iraqi interference with inspections will now be met with U.S.-led military reprisals. It is no longer the time to "contain" Saddam but to confront him head-on over his attempt to undermine a valuable and effective U.N. agency that has kept his plans for mass murder in check.

Commission Briefing on The Kurds in Turkey Announced

The Kurdish Situation in Turkey Wednesday, Nov. 13 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Room 2255, Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC Open to Members, Staff, the Public and Press

Speakers will be: Sirri Sakik, a former Democracy Party (DEP) parliamentarian from the southeastern city of Mus. After being stripped of parliamentary immunity, he was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for statements he had made and was released in 1995. He currently faces charges for this statement he made following the People's Democratic Party (HADEP) convention and his protest over the removal of the Kurdish flag: "People who desire that a certain respect be paid to their own flags should be respectful of other's flags." Turkish prosecutors have deemed this an expression of separatism and charged Sakik under Article 8 of the Anti-Terror Law, which, although amended last fall in response to European concerns over Turkey's poor human rights record, dozens of individuals have been jailed under this revision and hundreds other similarly restrictive laws. Ahmet Turk, a founding member of the DEP. From 1991 to 1994 he represented the southeastern city of Mardin in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, where he chaired the Human Rights Commission. In March 1994, Turk and a dozen DEP colleagues were stripped of parliamentary immunity and sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges including charges for statements he made before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was released from prison in 1995. Background: Violence and regional instability threaten Turkey's democratic system and strain relations with Ankara's NATO allies. Since 1984, more than 21,000 individuals have died in clashes between security forces, Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants and Muslim Fundaments. Authorities have evacuated or destroyed 3,000 Kurdish villages in southeastern Turkey, displacing nearly three million people. Under the mantle of combating terrorism, civil liberties have been curtailed. Human rights observers express growing concern over widespread torture by security forces and restrictions on free expression. Many human rights abuses have been targeted at Kurds who publicly or politically assert their Kurdish ethnic identity. Turkey's first Muslim party-led coalition government has continued efforts to delegitimize and dismantle Kurdish-based political parties. Following a convention last June at which a Turkish flag was torn down, 41 leaders and members of the Peoples Democracy Party (HADEP) were detained and charged for alleged ties with the outlawed PKK. Supported by more than 1.2 million votes in last December's elections, HADEP was viewed as a possible interlocutor in the bloody conflict between government forces and Kurdish militants. Yet, like its predecessor DEP, whose 13 parliamentarians were imprisoned or exiled for speech crimes, HADEP too has become a target. Following the convention, three HADEP members were murdered and party offices bombed. The men accused of tearing down the flag were charged with treason and could face the death penalty.