PKK asserts it would resume armed activities against Turkey

ARBIL / IraqiNews.com: The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) will resume armed activities against Turkey after the latter’s government failed to respond to leader Abdullah Ocalan a month ago to take steps towards a solution for the Kurdish issue, a PKK official said on Friday. “The decision comes after the one-month deadline offered by PKK leader Ocalan from his prison in Turkey to adopt positive steps for a settlement of the Kurdish cause,” Ahmed Denz, the PKK’s official in charge of foreign relations, told IraqiNews.com news agency. The PKK had announced on Thursday that it gave orders on June 1, 2010 to its fighters to strike the Turkish army troops wherever they are in the Iraqi Kurdistan region, a few years after a unilateral ceasefire. The announcement is coinciding with a visit by Massoud Barazani, the president of the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region, to Turkey that started on June 2 at the head of a senior delegation. The visit is Barzani’s first ever as president of Iraqi Kurdistan, not as a leader of political party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). The PKK, or Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan in Kurdish, which is banned in Turkey, has been leading an armed campaign inside Turkey since 1984. Iraqi border areas in the Kurdistan region, adjacent to Turkey and Iran, are coming under occasional Turkish air attacks and Iranian artillery shelling allegedly to strike the strongholds of the PKK and the PJAK ( Partiya Jiyana Azada Kurdistanê in Kurdish or Kurdistan Free Life Party), both are against Turkey and Iran respectively. Relations between Iraq and Turkey were sharply tested last year when Turkish forces crossed into Iraq in pursuit of PKK. AmR (S) 1