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Kurdish rebels call for all-out offensive on Turkey

   ISTANBUL, March 5 (AFP) - The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) 
vowed Friday to launch a no-holds-barred offensive on Turkey,
mounting a show of unity and determination after the capture of its
leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
   The PKK's central committee said a sixth congress of the party 
resolved to "mobilize party, masses, armed forces and political
resources for a victory offensive that recognizes no rules."
   The congress made its resolution "in the face of the attempt to 
annihilate our party and our people in the person of our national
leader, Chairman Apo (Abdullah Ocalan)," said the statement, issued
by the party's political wing, ERNK.
   "Our offensive will continue until Chairman Apo and Kurdistan 
have been liberated," it declared.
   According to an ERNK spokesman, the congress was held in 
PKK-controlled territory in "northern Kurdistan" within Turkey over
the past six weeks and attended by 350 delegates.
   The meeting thus coincided with the capture of PKK leader 
Ocalan, who was hauled back to Turkey in mid-February and imprisoned
on the island of Imrali, where he is awaiting trial and a possible
death penalty on charges of treason.
   The PKK congress blasted the arrest as a "cowardly plot" and 
vowed that Turkey would come to regret its "false victory." Turkish
claims that the PKK would fall apart without its leader were branded
as "hollow enemy propaganda".
   The congress unanimously re-elected Ocalan as party chairman, 
the statement said, adding that a new central committee had also
been elected.
   The central committee called for a three-pronged strategy 
against Turkey, adding attacks in Turkish cities to mass
demonstrations abroad and an intensified war in southeastern
Turkey.
   "We call on all our people in northern Kurdistan and in the 
Turkish towns to fight with any means in a popular uprising to
defeat the Turkish state system.
   "We call on our people in the other parts of Kurdistan and 
abroad to support chairman Apo and our struggle in northern
Kurdistan by continuing their mass actions. We call on the Kurdish
youth to join the ranks of our armed forces and their heroical
fight," the statement said.
   "Strike at the enemy with any means you can find," it said. "Let 
us target them everywhere and anywhere."
   The PKK on Thursday claimed responsibility for a suicide attack 
on a police station in Batman in southeastern Turkey, which left the
attacker dead and four passers-by injured.
   An ERNK spokesman said the attack was a result of the decisions 
of the PKK congress.
   In another bombing in the central Anatolian town of Cankiri on 
Friday, a provincial governor was seriously injured and three people
were killed. Turkish police chief Necati Bilican said a radical
left-wing organization, the Turkish Peasants' and Workers'
Liberation Army (TIKKO), claimed responsibility for that attack.
   Almost 31,000 people have died in clashes between Turkish 
security forces and the PKK since the rebels took up arms for
Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey in 1984.

 

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