13 December 2002

1. "Ocalan’s lawyer: A new concept", KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan could not meet with his lawyers on the pretext of “bad weather conditions” yesterday. Irfan Dundar, one of his lawyers drew attention that they were now facing a new concept.KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan could not see his lawyers yesterday either. Ocalan could not with his lawyers 16 times in 2002. While KADEK has launched a campaign to improve his conditions, Turkish General Staff has given a briefing to Prime Minister Abdullah Gul asking for no improvement.

2. "Angry Turkey rounds on EU over membership talks delay", Turkey reacted furiously Friday to a European Union decision to delay by at least two years the launch of the Muslim-majority country's EU membership talks.

3. "As Cyprus talks falter, EU sets deadline; Will take in Greek Cypriots if no deal is reached", the European Union gave Greek and Turkish Cypriots one more chance Friday to resolve their differences but insisted it would invite only the Greek Cypriot side into the union if talks to reunify the island fail.

4. "Kurds now siding with America", the Kurds like to say they have “no friends but the mountains,” arguing that a quirk of geography has placed them in a landlocked enclave surrounded by hostile neighbors.

5. "Iran and Iraq", Neighbours from hell.

6. "Syrian Kurds demonstrate before the PA, asking for constitutional, cultural rights", some 100 Syrian Kurds gathered yesterday in front of the Syrian parliament asking for their rights, stated in a statement they were circulating on passerby at the sight of the policemen, in a first step of its kind by the second main party of the 12 Kurdish parties which is banned in Syria.

1. - Kurdish Observer - "Ocalan’s lawyer: A new concept":

KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan could not meet with his lawyers on the pretext of “bad weather conditions” yesterday. Irfan Dundar, one of his lawyers drew attention that they were now facing a new concept.KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan could not see his lawyers yesterday either. Ocalan could not with his lawyers 16 times in 2002. While KADEK has launched a campaign to improve his conditions, Turkish General Staff has given a briefing to Prime Minister Abdullah Gul asking for no improvement.

FIRAZ BARAN/MHA / 12 December 2002

KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan could not see his lawyers yesterday either. Ocalan could not with his lawyers 16 times in 2002. While KADEK has launched a campaign to improve his conditions, Turkish General Staff has given a briefing to Prime Minister Abdullah Gul asking for no improvement.

Yesterday Ocalan’s lawyers Dogan Erbas, Firat Aydinkaya, Aydin Oruc and Ahmet Ercan Savas were not taken to the Imrali island on the pretext of “bad weather conditions”. Talking to MHA, lawyer Irfan Dundar drew attention that they were now facing a new concept. “Mr. Ocalan is a figure impressing Turkey and the Middle East. In order to keep it from being influential a new concept is brought onto the agenda. There is a possible war in Iraq. International forces are active. It is a list including Kurdish collaborators in Iraq and NATO. It offers an alliance and Turkey implements it,” said Dundar.

No answer

Dundar pointed out that from the beginning Ocalan had been treated specially. The lawyer emphasized that the constitution was violated, adding the following: “There must be no discrimination. We ask for his rights to be guaranteed. Mr. Ocalan’s rights are limited and it means violation of the constitution. Everybody must be equal before the laws, therefore such discriminative treatment must be abandoned.” Dundar said that they had submitted an appeal asking for a new boat or a helicopter but the state did not bother to give an answer.

He could not see his lawyers 16 times in a year

Abdullah Ocalan has the right to see his lawyers or his relatives once in a week, on Wednesdays and for an hour. But he could meet his lawyers 31 times and could not 16 times in 2002. Then KADEK has launched a campaign to claim and defend President Apo to be continued until February 15, 2003.

2. - AFP - "Angry Turkey rounds on EU over membership talks delay":

COPENHAGEN / 13 December 2002 / by Sibel Utku

Turkey reacted furiously Friday to a European Union decision to delay by at least two years the launch of the Muslim-majority country's EU membership talks.

EU leaders sought to assure Turkey -- a key US ally -- that its future lies in Europe despite putting off a start date for the country's accession drive until at least December 2004. But Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul accused the EU of "unacceptable discrimination" at a summit in Copenhagen.

"It's impossible to accept this decision," an aide quoted Gul as telling British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had backed Turkey's demands for an early start date for EU talks. "A great discrimination is being made," Gul was quoted, as saying in an apparent reference to Turkey's Muslim population. He also specifically accused French President Jacques Chirac of having negatively influenced the decision on Turkey at a dinner of EU leaders which opened the Copenhagen summit Thursday evening. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced that the EU would decide only at the end of 2004 whether to start membership talks with the key NATO member after evaluating its progress on democratic reforms.

Turkey, an EU candidate since 1999, had been pushing for a start date for accession talks as early as next year following its adoption of a raft of democracy and human rights reforms. The EU move came despite renewed pressure from the United States on behalf of Turkey, a pivotal ally whose support will be crucial to any war against Iraq. Meanwhile diplomats confirmed that Gul was still to meet Chirac and Germany Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder Friday, hours after blasting the EU decision.

Before the talks Gul said the EU accord "means that what we have done is not appreciated, and we are being discriminated against". It seemed unlikely that the EU, which is meeting to seal its historic enlargement to take in 10 new members from eastern Europe and the Mediterranean in 2004, would revise its decision. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said the date was "fixed."

"We worked so hard to get a date. Everybody understands that we are under strong pressure at home. we took some risk. but we were convinced it was a justified decision."

"It was really not easy to achieve this breakthrough and the breakthrough is the date. There is definitely a fixed date. We are not a Christian club, we are a club of shared values," he said. The Union said Ankara had to go further towards meeting the "Copenhagen criteria" for membership, a set of tough guidelines laid down in 1993 to judge whether a candidate country is fit for EU membership.

In their draft conclusions, the EU leaders said "Turkey is a candidate state destined to join the Union on the basis of the same criteria as applied to the other candidate states". The bloc called on the NATO member "to pursue energetically its reform process".

On the margins of the EU summit, Gul had held a series of last-ditch meetings with EU leaders in a bid to wrench a date in 2003 to start Turkey's EU drive. A Turkish diplomat had earlier played down the rebuff.

"The fact is that the debate over whether Turkey is a real candidate or not has ended with this decision, and Turkey is now a real candidate." Several EU heavyweights including Britain and Italy had hoped for an earlier date than 2005, which had been cited in a conditional proposal by France and Germany for Turkey -- the biggest of all 13 EU candidates with a population of 70 million.

Turkey had said that if it won an early commitment from the EU, it would give its backing to a United Nations peace plan for Cyprus, one of the 10 countries due to be invited to join at the Copenhagen summit. But a last-ditch bid by the UN to broker a deal on the divided island appeared to falter with the Turkish Cypriots ruling out an agreement in Copenhagen, meaning the Greek Cypriots alone will be invited to join the EU.

3. - Associated Press - "As Cyprus talks falter, EU sets deadline; Will take in Greek Cypriots if no deal is reached":

COPENHAGEN / 13 December 2002 / by Robert Wielaard

The European Union gave Greek and Turkish Cypriots one more chance Friday to resolve their differences but insisted it would invite only the Greek Cypriot side into the union if talks to reunify the island fail.

Cyprus has been divided into a Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish-occupied north since Turkey invaded the island in 1974 after a coup by supporters of union with Greece. A breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in the north is recognized only by Turkey, which maintains 40,000 troops there.

Hopes of a breakthrough after nearly three decades of division on the island faded Thursday when poor health prevented Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash from attending U.N.-led reconciliation talks.

Tahsin Ertugruloglu, the foreign and defense minister of the Turkish Cypriot republic, stood in for his ailing leader, but said his side wasn't ready to accept the latest U.N. proposal.

The U.N. plan envisages a Cyprus of two federal regions, a reduction of the Turkish-controlled area and a return home of Greek Cypriot refugees.

Chances for a settlement in the Cyprus talks, held on the sidelines of a two-day EU summit in Copenhagen were slim, Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis said.

It was hoped the prospect of joining the EU in 2004 would motivate Turkish Cypriots to agree to a unified Cyprus of two federated, ethnic communities.

But the frantic talks involving U.N., U.S., Greek, Turkish and Cypriot officials yielded no breakthrough in reconciliation efforts, which restarted a year ago after a two-year hiatus.

Without a deal, the EU will invite in just the southern, Greek-speaking part of Cyprus, offering Turkish Cypriots a chance to join later.

4. - AP - "Kurds now siding with America":

SULAYMANIA / 13 December 2002

The Kurds like to say they have “no friends but the mountains,” arguing that a quirk of geography has placed them in a landlocked enclave surrounded by hostile neighbors.

But over the decades the Kurds have also proved themselves their own worst enemy — breaking and remaking friendships with neighboring Iran, Iraq and Turkey, and fighting among themselves.

Kurdistan’s two major parties have in the last 20 years allied themselves with neighboring Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, both part of what President Bush has dubbed the “axis of evil.”

Now protected from Saddam by U.S. and British fighter planes, the two parties control northern Iraq and are working with American officials to prepare to build a new Iraq.

“Our leaders are not very keen on keeping their word sacred,” said Fouad Baban, a Kurdish doctor whose ancestors founded the city of Sulaymania three centuries ago. “But up until now the geopolitics of Kurdistan have been so complicated that it’s been impossible to stick to one policy.”

This time is different, said Sherko Bekis, a prominent Kurdish poet and publisher.

“In our history, we’ve done great damage to ourselves,” he said. “But we know we can’t have peace without getting rid of Saddam. And we know we can’t get rid of Saddam without America. And although Kurds would betray each other, we would never betray America.”

As the United States threatens a military campaign to topple Saddam, the two Kurdish parties — Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan — are among six Iraqi opposition parties meeting under U.S. auspices in London this week to map out a political future for their country.

The Kurds also could play a military role. They have 70,000 lightly armed soldiers controlling three of Iraq’s 18 provinces.

The Kurds, though, could hinder the American aim of retaining a unified, Baghdad-controlled Iraq, said Colin Rowat, an authority on Iraq at the University of Birmingham.

“Iraq’s Kurds have carved out their small measure of autonomy in part because U.S. politicians have seen their opposition to Saddam as useful over the decade,” Rowat said.

“If, however, the current Iraqi government is replaced with one that the U.S. wishes to support, then Iraq’s Kurds become an irritant.”

The Kurds have tried to reassure the world they are not seeking to tear apart Iraq. Barzani, speaking to reporters Tuesday during a visit to Iran, said his party does not want to form an independent Kurdish state that would worry neighbors such as Turkey.

Turkey, Iran and Syria all share borders with northern Iraq and oppose autonomy for Iraqi Kurds living in the area since it could feed the nationalist desires of their own Kurdish minorities.

For most of the 20th century, the Kurds have formed and broken alliances with their more powerful Turkish, Persian and Arab neighbors as well as the Western powers.

Usually they’ve wound up betrayed and left out in the cold, as when the United States and the Shah of Iran pulled the plug on the Iraqi Kurdish resistance movement in 1975.

Many observers of Kurdish history worry that Kurds will again be stabbed in the back.

“It is the American administration, not the Kurdish leaderships that I worry about,” said Carole O’Leary, a Kurdish expert at the American University in Washington. “The question is, ‘Can the Kurds trust the American leadership?’ Not the other way round.”

The Kurds also have had internal problems. The Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan have fought numerous times throughout the decade, most seriously during a 1994-1998 civil war that killed 1,000.

At the height of that war, following a failed 1996 CIA-backed coup attempt against Saddam, the Patriotic Union called upon Iran for help and Barzani called upon Saddam, who once sprayed chemical weapons on Kurds.

In the early 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, the situation was almost reversed, with the Patriotic Union helping Iraqi-backed guerrilla groups against Iran and Barzani siding with Tehran.

The two factions say they have put aside their differences and earlier this year sealed their pledges of peace by convening the full Kurdish parliament for the first time since their civil war.

“We know we haven’t been trustworthy,” said Rebin Herdy, a writer for the quarterly Kurdish magazine Rahand, or Wind. “Sometimes we have to form alliances with Turkey, with Iran, with Syria, with Baghdad to protect ourselves. What can we do? It’s the curse of our geography.”

5. - The Economist - "Iran and Iraq":

Neighbours from hell

12 December 2002

Iran's rulers want Saddam Hussein to go, but dread the manner of his going, especially if his successors give rein to Shia free thought and Kurdish aspirations

NO COUNTRY, Iraq apart, has suffered as much at the hands of Saddam Hussein as has Iran. The war that followed Iraq's invasion of Iran in 1980 cost the country half a million lives, and around $70 billion. Iranians are the only non-Iraqis to have endured large-scale Iraqi chemical attacks. Immediately after Iran's 1979 revolution, Iraq stirred insurgencies both in Iranian Kurdistan and in Iran's Arab-dominated province of Khuzistan. When George Bush talks of danger emanating from Iraq, Iran listens.

But Iran's anti-American ideology prevents it from allying itself wholeheartedly with Mr Bush to unseat Mr Hussein: there is national animus against America's president for putting Iran alongside Iraq in his “axis of evil”. And though Iran wants to rehabilitate itself in America's eyes, Washington has made plain that it has no time for Iran's theocratic regime, and is waiting for Iranians to topple it.

So the prospect of American action against Iraq fills Iranian officialdom with dread. Iran hates what Iraq is, but fears what it could be: an American client, only feebly opposed to Israel, and dominated by a Sunni-led army that is viscerally hostile to Shia Iran. A reconstructed Iraq might threaten Iran in several ways. If it institutionalises the de-facto self-government that is enjoyed by the Kurds of northern Iraq, it would raise the hopes of Iran's own, autonomy-seeking Kurds. Even worse, Iraq's oppressed Shias, who constitute at least 55% of the population, might use their new freedom to debate that thorniest of Shia issues: the entanglement of politics and religion. This deeply worries Iran, which built its Islamic republic on that entanglement, and does its best to suppress debate about it.

Iran remained neutral in the 1991 Gulf war, but not in its aftermath. After George Bush the elder incited rebellion in southern Iraq (as well as in the north), Iran's neutrality gave way to adventure. Using soldiers from Ayatollah Muhammad Baqer al-Hakim's Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a Tehran-based group of Iraqi Shias, as well as its own Revolutionary Guards, Iran tried to turn the rebellion into an Islamic revolution. The attempt backfired when an alarmed Mr Bush, under pressure from Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia, abandoned the rebels to Mr Hussein, who slaughtered some 30,000 people.

Mr Hussein then drove 8,000 Shia clerics out of the shrine city of Najaf. He went on to murder, or so it is thought, four of Iraq's top-rank ayatollahs, and dozens of other senior clerics. Three senior ayatollahs survive in Iraq, though attempts have been made on the lives of two of them. The main beneficiary of this repression was Qom, the Iranian seminary town to which many fled. The city is currently host to 3,000 Iraqi clerics.

But since the 1979 revolution, Qom has been home to the strain of political activism that is at the heart of Iran's theocratic regime. In Qom, you can get into serious trouble if you declare your opposition to clerical rule, or to the theology that underpins it. However, many feel that the faith's real home is across the border, in Najaf and Karbala, which have more illustrious histories and more important shrines. If Mr Hussein were ousted, not only would there be an exodus of Iraqi seminarians from Qom, but many Iranian clerics might also be lured by the prestige of Iraq's holy places, and the promise of a less patrolled political environment where they would be freer to criticise the theology that sustains the Iranian regime. The debate would then spread to their own country.

Iraq's Shia clerics are cool about Iran's theocratic system—a quasi-democracy supervised by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an unelected supreme leader with virtually untrammelled powers—and have no wish to foist something similar on their own countrymen. SCIRI, at least in theory, has joined the other opposition groups in signing up to western-style democracy. Mr al-Hakim has developed friendly relations with America, although he refuses American funding. Even the “Islamist Shias”—Iraqis who remain untainted by the country's secularism, and are roughly estimated to be about a third of the population—are said to be opposed to clerical rule.

Iraqi Shias tend to resent Iranian impositions. Two years into the Iran-Iraq war, they stoutly defended the southern part of their country when Iran invaded it. Many of them were angry when SCIRI's forces teamed up with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in 1991. Were it not for Iran's interference, and Mr Bush's shocked response, they think their rebellion might have had a good chance of succeeding.

Mr al-Hakim himself commands respect as the son of a much-revered ayatollah. His large family is said to have lost over two dozen members to Mr Hussein's death squads and executioners. But if he is to become the undisputed spokesman of Iraq's Shias, he will have to demonstrate his independence. At present, he has little, since Iran can veto any SCIRI initiative.

The Army of Badr on the move?

Looking ahead to a possible uprising, Mr al-Hakim hints that his (Iranian-armed and based) standing army, the Army of Badr, might invade. But his people in Khuzistan, which is contiguous to Iraq's strategic port of Basra, are not so sure: freelance agents and saboteurs, they say, will light the match of popular rebellion. Salah Moussavi, the local SCIRI representative, doubts whether Iran would allow the Army of Badr to piggyback on an American invasion—and the Americans might well regard the army, with its Iranian links, as an undesirable partner.

America and Iran are exploring the possibility of limited military co-operation. The most recent contacts, which apparently took place on the sidelines of the meetings of Iraqi dissidents, are said to have involved Iran's intelligence people. This would mark a welcome change, in American eyes, from the run-of-the-mill meetings with Iranian diplomats.

At the same time, there is still a degree of Iranian-Iraqi co-operation. As a gesture of goodwill, Mr Hussein has restricted the activities of the People's Mujahedeen, an armed Iranian opposition group based in southern Iraq. More than a year has elapsed since the Mujahedeen last launched a serious attack on Iranian soil. Possibly as a quid pro quo, Iran has been restricting the activities of the Army of Badr. A painfully attenuated process of prisoner-of-war exchanges is almost finished: Iraq is now thought to be holding fewer than 1,000 Iranians, though Iran probably has more Iraqis.

But, squirming under American scrutiny, the Iranians feel obliged to place strict limits on this co-operation. In the summer, Iran turned down Iraq's request that it return some 100 warplanes that Mr Hussein had entrusted to Iran during the Gulf war. And Iran no longer turns a blind eye to Iraq's smuggling of oil through the Gulf; the Iranian navy has intercepted offending ships and impounded their cargoes.

The two countries exist in what Iraq's foreign minister, on a recent visit to Iran, described as neither peace nor war. This is an awkward state of limbo, and the province of Khuzistan reflects it. Despite the continued importance of its oil, Khuzistan comes third in Iran's provincial unemployment charts. It is home to 120,000 Iraqi migrants, most of them poor, and six sad refugee camps. Fear of hostilities has precluded investment, pushed tribal Arabs out of fertile border areas, and led to a middle-class exodus. In Ahwaz, the provincial capital, everyone wishes that Mr Hussein would go, but fears the manner of his going—including the fear of Iraqi missiles being fired Iran's way if Iran connives actively at his departure.

At least Khuzistan's anxieties coincide, roughly, with those of Iran in general. They are not complicated by separatist visions: Iran's Arabs seek more representation in the government that exists, not a different government altogether. This cannot be said of the Kurdish-majority areas to the north. Iran's 5m-odd Kurds are alienated by ethnicity, and often by confession too. Most of them are Sunni—like their cousins in northern Iraq.

These cousins, in their western-protected safe haven, had a calamitous time early on, cursed by the infighting of the KDP and the PUK (the two main Kurdish factions), and by the military intervention of, variously, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. But they are now building a viable home. Kurds everywhere are proud of them.

In October, when the KDP and PUK held their first joint session of parliament in eight years, the satisfaction spread to Sanandaj, the capital of the Iranian province of Kurdistan. According to Abdol Momen Mardoukh, who advises the provincial governor on social affairs, Iraqi Kurdistan, especially if its autonomy is recognised within a future Iraqi federation, could provide a model for Iranian Kurds.

Since Muhammad Khatami was elected Iran's president in 1997, his representatives in Kurdistan have gone some way to reversing years of discrimination. They allow the Kurds, both Sunni and Shia, to be better represented in the provincial bureaucracy, and have granted them greatly enhanced cultural rights.

But Iran's conservative clerics are deeply alarmed when Iranian Kurds express their admiration for Iraqi Kurdistan. They suspect moderates, such as Mr Mardoukh, of secretly supporting the outlawed Kurdish groups that fought, unsuccessfully, for self-determination in the 1980s. (These groups now survive, emasculated, in northern Iraq.) Furthermore, they regard the advancement of Sunnis, or the lacklustre promotion of the Shia faith in Sunni areas, as a dereliction of duty.

Some people in Sanandaj detect Ayatollah Khamenei's hand in the appointment of a non-Kurdish Shia official to be provincial governor. Iran's Revolutionary Guard vetoed efforts by Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi Kurd whose PUK enclave adjoins Iranian Kurdistan, to broker an accommodation between the Iranian government and Iran's outlawed Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), which has taken sanctuary in Mr Talabani's territory.

The Iranian-Turkish partnership

Iran is seeking alliances with other governments who feel themselves threatened by Kurdish prospects. Co-operation with Turkey has increased since the battlefield demise of Turkey's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which used to take sanctuary in Iran after attacking Turkish targets. In the summer, Mr Khatami used a trip to Turkey, whose opposition to an independent Iraqi Kurdistan is even more virulent than Iran's, to reiterate his own firmness.

If the Iraqi Kurds were to declare their independence, Iran and Turkey would gang up to stop them. For now, Iran hopes to influence events mainly through its ally, Mr Talabani, and his PUK. Mr Talabani keeps a beady eye on KDPI operatives in his enclave, and allows Iranian agents to roam freely. In return, he receives diplomatic, economic and military aid.

Yet there is little trust on either side. This summer, the head of the Revolutionary Guard castigated Mr Talabani for backing American policy towards Iraq. And Mr Talabani has made much of the threat posed by Ansar al-Islam, a small group of Sunni fanatics with supposed links to al-Qaeda that operates in his territory. Fearful of America's reaction, Iran has downgraded its support for the group, which it had used against Mr Talabani as an occasional irritant. There are reports that Iran has given America transcripts of interviews with Ansar's leader, Mullah Krekar, who was picked up in Tehran this year, before being deported to the Netherlands.

In a sense, Iran is in a strong position to influence events in Iraq. It has godfathered an alliance between the PUK and SCIRI—which may also include the KDP after a visit by its leader, Massoud Barzani, to Tehran this week. This was Mr Barzani's first visit in eight years, and he saw a lot of big shots, including intelligence people. Counted together, the Kurdish parties and SCIRI pack incomparably more punch than the other Iraqi opposition groups combined. But pacts of this kind mean little without America.

And Iran's relations with America are dismal. Mr Khatami plainly dislikes Mr Bush, and Mr Bush has little time for the Iranian reformists or Mr Khatami's elegant disquisitions on civilisation. Worse still, as Mr Khatami feels his way through a protracted domestic crisis, he suspects Mr Bush of trying to tip Iran into chaos.

Iran is bitter that it got no American thanks for having helped Afghanistan's Northern Alliance to topple the Taliban. Instead, the Americans berated the Iranians for a few acts of mischief that were probably carried out at the behest of Mr Khatami's conservative opponents.

Angling for Iran's co-operation on Iraq, Mr Bush has resisted pressure to send messages of support to the Iranian students who have now been demonstrating against the regime for more than a month. But Iran's fear is that once the Americans have dispatched Mr Hussein, their next target will be Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shia group that Iran founded in the 1980s, and which it has armed and financed, though not generously. At the very least Mr Bush is bound to ask tough questions, and today's enfeebled Iran, torn between reformists and conservatives, is ill-equipped to answer difficult challenges.

6. - Arabic News - "Syrian Kurds demonstrate before the PA, asking for constitutional, cultural rights":

12 December 2002

Some 100 Syrian Kurds gathered yesterday in front of the Syrian parliament asking for their rights, stated in a statement they were circulating on passerby at the sight of the policemen, in a first step of its kind by the second main party of the 12 Kurdish parties which is banned in Syria.

This incident is considered the second initiative to open this file following the round-table which was held by the Kurdish Progressive party since one month about the rights of the Kurds.

The observers of the sit-in who belong to the banned Kurdish Yaktini party, raised banners in Arabic and Kurdish languages calling for that "Syria to be the homeland for all its people: Arabs, Kurds and minorities" and to "lift repression from the Kurdish people and to recognize their Kurdish nationality" and the "Syrian nationality forbidden from them."

The Syrian security forces permitted two members of the political bureau of the Kurdish party, Marwan Othman and Hassan Saleh ,to enter the parliament and to meet with its speaker Abdul Qader Qaddoura who received a copy of the statement. Qaddoura was quoted as "understanding these demands," according to one of the two men. Qaddoura showed certain observations on the statement and the way the demands were raised." The gathering became disolved without any problems.

The statement which was circulated on the passersby on the occasion of the world day on human rights, called on the state to reconsider dealing with the Kurds and to deal with them like other Syrians citizens regarding rights and duties and "to eliminate discrimination against them," " lifting the sanctions from the Kurdish language and culture" and to "recognize constitutionally the existence of a Kurdish community in the context of the country's unity." The statement estimated the number of persons deprived of the Syrian nationality at one quarter million out of the 2.5 million Kurds, representing 12 percent of the population number in Syria.

However, the openness towards this issue has started just two years ago, but the Syrian official authorities have an opposite position concerning the demands raised by the statement, as these authorities consider that the Kurds as practicing their cultural activities, but they do not have the right to learn using their own language because the issue is linked to the existence of other minorities in Syria like the Assurs, the Armenians, the Sharkas and the Assyrians and others. A matter which will create disorder in the learning curricula."