Reuters

A Turkish soldier was killed on Friday after stepping on a mine laid by Kurdish rebels in the country's troubled southeast, security officials said.

The incident occurred during military operations in a remote mountainous area of Hakkari province, on the Iraqi border.

The officials said troop reinforcements had been sent to the area and military helicopters were making reconnaissance flights to establish the whereabouts of the rebels. The dead man held the rank of sergeant-major.

Turkey has massed troops along its Iraqi border as part of an annual spring offensive against rebels of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who regularly pass into Turkey from Iraq to attack Turkish security forces and other targets.

Up to 5,000 PKK militants are believed to be holed up in mountainous, mainly Kurdish northern Iraq.

Ankara holds the PKK responsible for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group launched its armed campaign for a Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984.

Violent clashes between rebels and security forces have increased since the PKK ended a unilateral ceasefire in 2004.

KurdishMedia.com
By Vladimir van Wilgenburg

The Iranian administration has drafted a bill that foresees penalties for people who watch Kurdish satellite broadcasts, a move that came after the Kurdish parties KDP-I and Komala started broadcasting reported Turkish Daily News and the Dogan News Agency.

The South-Kurdistan based Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP-I) and the Kurdish communist party Komala started Kurdish satellite broadcasts via Rojhelat TV and Tiskh TV. The two Kurdish television stations are based in Sweden, which make test broadcasts in Persian and Kurdish, in which is spoken about the political situation in East-Kurdistan and Iran.

Iran has so far prevented broadcasts of Tiskh Tv with diplomacy. But this isn’t confirmed yet by the KDP-I itself. According to Dogan’s information Tiskh TV, which started broadcasts in late February at the request of KDP-I’s General Secretary Mustafa Hicri, wants to become the voice of the “Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party's military wing”.

Despite the presence of a ban forcing people who watch banned satellite broadcasts to pay 500,000 riyali (YTL 650), Tehran drafted another bill that brings tougher measures and sent it to parliament upon an instruction from President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

The new bill foresees three to six months' imprisonment for violators of the ban and forces them to pay 5.5 million riyali (YTL 7,700). The bill will be legislated as soon as possible, according to Iranian officials.

Iranian officials have reportedly already started collecting satellite antennas in many cities including Mahabad, the historical city of Kurdish nationalism, where many Kurds live and implementing the penalties for Kurdish civilians.

The Iranian administration has raised concerns over Roj TV as well, due to its broadcasts about the activities of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), described as the Iranian wing of the PKK. Roj TV also reports about the daily events in East-Kurdistan and is seen as a PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) mouthpiece by Iran, Syria and Turkey.

It’s not known if the Iranian administration also jails people who are watching the TV-stations of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) (KurdSat and Kurdistan TV). Although the Turkish news agency reported about the tougher measures taken against Kurds watching dissident television, it forgot to report about the tougher measures taken against the Turkish people living in Iran (South-Azerbaijan). Also Azeri Turks who are caught red-handed, when watching TV opposition broadcasts will face prison. One of these TV-stations is GunazTV, which TV-broadcasts through Turkish satellite were recently closed.

So far the Kurdish parties haven’t responded on the recent steps taken by the non-democratic Iranian regime.

Iran has fears that minorities like the Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis and Kurds might try to break the country up. In the past Kurds and Azeri Turks already showed their own determination for self-rule in their short-lived state projects from 1945 to 1946. The “State of Republic of Kurdistan” in Mahabad as well as the "Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan” in Tebriz were destroyed by the Iranian army.

By Louis Charbonneau

BERLIN (Reuters) - U.N. inspectors have discovered new traces of highly-enriched uranium on nuclear equipment in Iran, deepening suspicions Tehran may still be concealing the full extent of its atomic enrichment programme, diplomats said.

Several Western diplomats said there were signs Iran continued to pursue uranium enrichment research in secret and fear the goal is to acquire the capability to produce enriched-uranium fuel for weapons -- a charge Iran denies.

In its April report to the U.N. Security Council, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it took samples from equipment that had been acquired by a former research centre at Lavizan-Shiyan. The centre was razed in 2004 before IAEA inspectors could examine it.

The IAEA inspectors took swabs from the machinery earlier this year which were subjected to microscopic particle analysis.

"Preliminary analysis by the IAEA showed traces of highly-enriched uranium in the samples," a Western diplomat accredited to the IAEA told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

He gave no details about the equipment. The former physics centre at Lavizan, which advised the defence ministry, acquired some dual-use machinery useable for uranium enrichment.

A diplomat in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, confirmed the new finding but warned against exaggerating its significance: "It's no smoking gun. There could be many explanations. But it increases pressure on Iran to come clean about Lavizan."

Iranian officials declined to comment for this article.

In 2003, the IAEA found traces of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) at several sites in Iran. Most HEU is now believed to have come from contamination on second-hand Pakistani equipment.

"Even if it is the same contamination, this is a significant finding because it indicates something was going on at Lavizan," said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and head of the Institute for Science and International Security think-tank.

SECRET SITES?

He said it raised the question of whether Iran ran a second parallel enrichment programme alongside the one it has declared.

The finding will probably also deepen suspicions among Western countries that Iran's military was actively involved in the programme for uranium enrichment, a process of purifying uranium for use in nuclear power plants or atomic weapons.

Iran says it only wants to generate electricity, but the West believes the secrecy and military links to its atomic programme are clear signs that it is also aimed at making bombs.

The U.N. Security Council has called on Iran to freeze its enrichment programme, but Tehran refuses.

Iran has already succeeded in purifying uranium to low-grade levels needed for power plants. Western diplomats say the sophistication of Iranian nuclear scientists is surprising.

They say that during a 2-1/2 year suspension of its enrichment programme, Iranian scientists have significantly improved their mastery of centrifuges, which purify gas of a uranium compound by spinning at supersonic speeds.

"Our (intelligence) assessment is that you cannot explain Iran's progress without secret (enrichment) sites being involved," said a diplomat from a country critical of Iran.

Others say Iran could have made such progress through simulation work.

Another diplomat from the same country said he suspected small amounts of processed uranium gas were being diverted from Isfahan, possibly to undisclosed enrichment sites in Iran. An EU diplomat said the IAEA had such suspicions too but no proof.

Albright said there was no proof of any "secret site" in Iran.

(Additional reporting by Mark Heinrich and Francois Murphy in Vienna)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union will insist on Monday that Iran must suspend all uranium enrichment despite Tehran's demand that some be allowed for research goals, according to a draft declaration obtained by Reuters on Friday.

"It (the EU Council) calls on the Iranian authorities to cooperate fully with the IAEA, suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development," according to a declaration drafted for EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday.

Tehran said on Thursday that a new proposal been drawn up by European states on its nuclear program must allow Iran to enrich uranium for atomic research and development purposes.

Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, May 12 – Iranian security forces have extended their crackdown on “mal-veiled” women from Tehran to Iran’s other provinces.

The semi-official daily Jomhouri Islami quoted on Wednesday the head of the State Security Forces in the province of Gilan, northern Iran, as saying that 15 women had been arrested on charges of “mal-veiling”.

The women were all arrested in the provincial capital, Rasht, it said, adding that a number of other women had also received warnings that they would also be arrested if they breached the Islamic dress code.

The crackdown, which began in Tehran in mid-April, coincided with a call by Majlis (Parliament) deputies for the adoption of a bill to regulate women’s attire during the hot summer months.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, women in Iran have been forced to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise the shape of their bodies in public.

Penalties for disobeying the dress code are severe. Women caught flouting the code can receive lashes, jail sentences, and large fines.

KurdishMedia.com
By Gerald A. Honigman

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a letter to President George W. Bush this past May 8th in which, among other things, he proclaimed Israel’s alleged original sin and the need to create another state for Arabs in the region.

Jews--like Kurds or Berbers or Assyrians or Copts or black African Sudanese, and so forth--were entitled to nothing in what Arabs like to call their exclusive "purely Arab patrimony." Note that the vast majority of Arabs were newcomers into the Mandate themselves as the Records of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League Of Nations and other solid documentation testify to.

Full Story: www.kurdmedia.com/articles.asp?id=12313

Bloomberg

May 12 (Bloomberg) -- Sakine Arat hasn't seen her son since he left their hometown in southeast Turkey 13 years ago and joined Kurdish rebels doing battle with the army.

``I sometimes catch a glimpse of a young man who looks like Murat, in a crowd in front of me or on the other side of the road,'' Arat, 71, said in Diyarbakir, 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the Syrian border. ``But of course, it's never him.''

Murat is one of 7,000 armed Kurds fighting Turkish soldiers in the southeastern mountains in a conflict that has escalated since his Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, ended a five-year cease-fire in June 2004. The PKK is demanding political rights and better living standards for Turkey's 12 million Kurds. The government says it's a terrorist organization.

Escalating ethnic tensions and bomb attacks in the region this year have damaged tourism and may threaten Turkey's bid to join the European Union. The 25-nation bloc has called on Turkey to strengthen democracy for the Kurds, including allowing them the right to stage protests. The Muslim Kurds are the dominant ethnic group in southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq and northwestern Iran.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 52, says he won't negotiate with the rebels, and has criticized the EU for failing to curb the organization's financing and political support from Kurdish exiles in Europe.

``The EU must be looking rather negatively at Turkey right now, because the government had told them it is widening rights for Kurds and tackling the military, but now all we seem to be seeing is violence and bloodshed,'' said Amanda Akcakoca, a policy analyst at the European Policy Centre in Brussels.

Violent Clashes

The PKK ended its cease-fire after the Turkish army refused to stop attacks against its members. At least 75 militants and Turkish security personnel have died in clashes since November, according to government reports. Forty people were killed in April alone.

Turkish police fired on demonstrators in Diyarbakir, killing at least 10 people, after thousands rampaged through the city throwing stones and setting fire to buildings during a March 28 funeral procession for four members of the PKK. Among 300 people arrested were 10 regional chiefs of the Democratic Society, or DTP, Turkey's biggest pro-Kurdish party.

At least 21 people, including 11 children, were wounded when a bomb exploded in the town of Hakkari, less than 50 kilometers from Iran and Iraq, on May 3. Authorities blamed Kurdish rebels for the attack.

Kurdish groups have threatened to attack tourist resorts on Turkey's Mediterranean coastline this year. The number of visitors slumped 12 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier. Turkey is relying on revenue from tourism to help narrow a current-account deficit that widened to a record $23 billion last year.

EU Negotiations

Turkey began EU membership talks in October, hoping to attract investment by foreign companies, boost incomes and create jobs for a working-age population that's growing by half a million each year. The country won't be able to join before 2014 at the earliest, the EU says.

Plans by the Turkish government for tougher anti-terrorism laws to tackle the PKK, now before parliament, have been criticized by the EU, which says the measure threatens to setback democratic reforms in the Kurdish region.

``We call upon all parties to exercise restraint, to remain committed to peaceful means and to show respect for democracy and the rule of law,'' said Krisztina Nagy, a spokeswoman for EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, in an e-mailed statement.

PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, 58, was sentenced to be executed by a Turkish court in 1999. The government commuted his punishment to life imprisonment and dropped the death penalty three years later under pressure from the EU. Ocalan is the sole prisoner on an island jail off Turkey's western coast.

Village Murders

The Turkish parliament in the past five years has passed laws allowing Kurdish TV and radio broadcasts and now allows Kurdish adults to study in their own language. Kurdish activists including Leyla Zana, released in July 2004 after a 10-year jail term, say the steps don't go far enough.

Kurdish discontent is evident in Diyarbakir, where the unemployment rate is 40 percent, or almost twice government estimates, according to Sahismail Bedirhanoglu, head of the city's largest business group. A government plan to inject cash into the southeast's economy won't work unless taxes are lowered for companies, he said in an interview April 13.

In Dogancay, 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Turkey's border with Syria, villagers are mourning the murder of Ferho Akgul, 85, and his wife Fatma, 80, who were attacked in their home on March 2. The two are the parents of Derwish Ferho, chairman of the Kurdish Institute of Brussels, a group that campaigns against what it says are violations of Kurds' human rights.

`Show Courage'

``It appears that the murders were politically motivated, but none of us have any idea who killed them,'' said Ferman Akgul, 18, a relative of the dead couple, in an interview.

Sakine Arat hopes pressure from the EU will end the violence and bring home her son Murat, who's now 37. Tarcettin, another of her five sons, died at the age of 34 fighting the Turkish army last year, she said.

``All I want is peace and my son back by my side, just like any other mother or father would do,'' she said. ``The government must show courage and announce an amnesty for all those fighting in the mountains, to help put an end to all this bloodshed.''

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=aEfRw6qiOXC4&refer=europe#

By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will not hold direct contacts with Iran and insists that sanctions must be part of a new carrots-and-sticks offer being drawn up by major powers to curb Iran's nuclear activities, a senior administration official said.

Addressing an influential Middle East policy group on Thursday night, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns promised that Washington will not "quit the diplomatic track easily."

American experts and political figures have increasingly urged the administration to talk directly to Iran in searching for a diplomatic solution.

But Burns rejected that, saying the world must "put responsibility where it lies" -- on Iran, not the United States -- for defying the international community and fanning the nuclear crisis.

He warned Iran and other key players that "we can't be captive to endless discussions in the (U.N.) Security Council and we won't allow ourselves to be."

Burns stressed the need for Washington to maintain a "hard edge" to its policy as the international community seeks to curb Iranian activities that the United States and its allies say are aimed at producing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian energy program. Tehran denies the charge.

In the latest effort to resolve the crisis, Britain, France and Germany, with backing from the United States, Russia and China, are to unveil in the next 10 days a package of inducements and penalties for Iran, depending on whether it chooses the path of cooperation or resistance, Burns said.

It is still unclear whether Russia and China -- which fear a worsening crisis with oil-producing Iran -- would endorse an offer that includes sanctions, but the United States would insist it includes penalties as well as benefits, he said.

"The package cannot be whole until both halves are joined together," Burns told the annual dinner of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Because of Russian and Chinese opposition, Washington and key European allies have so far failed to secure a U.N. Security Council resolution that would legally oblige Iran to halt all uranium enrichment work or face possible sanctions.

RUSSIAN FUEL OFFER

Burns said the package being drafted by the Europeans would restate Moscow's previous offer to guarantee Iran nuclear fuel for power generation that is produced in Russia, and also include other economic and technological incentives.

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, on Thursday welcomed moves to avert possible U.N. sanctions against Tehran and appealed for compromise, as Iran's president said he was ready to talk.

ElBaradei called for both sides to move away from a "war of the words" and said, "I hope that at this stage we will use more carrots before we think of using sticks."

But Burns said that given an acceleration in Iran's nuclear program, it is imperative to "raise the cost" this year on Tehran if it persists in moving forward with enriching nuclear fuel against the demands of the Security Council.

Iran said any European proposals would have to allow it to enrich uranium for atomic research and development purposes. Burns ruled this out.

He dismissed the unprecedented 18-page letter this week from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Bush as a "missed opportunity" to seriously address issues at the heart of the dispute.

The United States broke diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980 when 52 Americans were being held hostage by Iranian militants who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran months after the 1979 Islamic revolution.