Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Baghdad, Oct 22, (VOI) – The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) said it will cease its military activities starting Monday evening in compliance with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s call to renounce violence and adopt a peaceful approach to the crisis, a Kurdistan Coalition (KC) member said.

“Kurdish officials made considerable efforts to find a peaceful solution to the PKK’s problem and convince it to give up arms and start dialogue,” Mahmoud Uthman told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

“Since yesterday we have been involved in dialogue with PKK officials to sway them away from violence,” he indicated.

“Turkish Kurds are seeking their simplest rights,” Uthman noted, denying their desire for independence or a federal system as in the case of Kurdish Iraqis.
Uthman told VOI earlier today that the Kurdish side had asked the PKK to cease all military operations against the Turkish army as it considered them futile.
“Iraq’s Kurdistan believes that the PKK has to cease all military operations against the Turkish army and use dialogue to resolve all problems with the Turkish side. It further believes that Turkey has to make constitutional reforms and recognize the Kurdish rights,” Uthman added.

He held Turkey responsibility for the PKK’s presence in the Iraqi territories because of what he termed as “state terrorism” and the use of violence against Turkish Kurds.

“It would be best if Turkey issues a general pardon for the PKK,” he affirmed.

“A large number of Turkey’s Kurds are now in Makhmour camp in Kurdistan, supervised by the U.N., who escaped from the Turkish army’s attacks,” the MP added.

On Sunday, the Turkish army said 12 soldiers were killed and 15 others were wounded during clashes with Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) fighters.

Meanwhile, a PKK foreign relations official claimed that the Turkish army “lost more than it announced” during the clashes that occurred on Saturday evening along the Iraqi-Turkish borders.

AP:

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s president, a Kurd, said Monday that Kurdish rebels will announce a cease-fire, his office confirmed, as tensions soared over a Turkish threat to stage a cross-border incursion against guerrilla bases in northern Iraq.

President Jalal Talabani said the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, know by its Kurdish acronym PKK, would make the announcement later Monday.

Talabani’s remarks were made to reporters at the airport in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah before he flew to Baghdad and confirmed by his office. More details were not immediately available.