Abdullah Ocalan

On trial for his life, Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan rejected blame Tuesday for the 1993 slaughter of dozens of unarmed soldiers, an attack that shattered a rebel cease-fire and led to a massive military crackdown on Turkey's Kurds. Ocalan also denied that his group had a hand in the 1986 slaying of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme and rejected accusations that he ordered attacks on Turkish tourist sites in which several foreigners were killed or injured.

Two relatives of soldiers killed in Turkey's Kurdish insurgency set themselves on fire in an Istanbul cemetery Thursday, during a protest against the government's decision to delay executing a Kurdish rebel leader. Onlookers rushed to aid the pair--the mother of a slain army lieutenant and the brother of another killed soldier--beating the flames with jackets and rolling the two on the ground to try to put out the fire.

A Kurdish rebel leader is free to leave Italy after a court lifted restrictions on him Wednesday--a decision condemned by Turkish leaders who consider Abdullah Ocalan a terrorist. The ruling followed a decision by Germany to withdraw the international arrest warrant it had issued for Ocalan on terrorism charges, news reports said. A spokesman said Ocalan has no immediate plans to leave the Rome villa where he has been kept under police surveillance.

Re "Bush order freezing alleged terrorist funds ruled illegal," Nov. 29 The Kurdistan Workers Party is a terrorist organization, as acknowledged by the U.S. and the European Union. The heinous acts of the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, claimed more than 35,000 lives in Turkey. Following the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in 1999, the PKK was replaced by another terrorist group, Kongra-Gel, which launched a series of bombings and attacks on civilian targets as recently as this year.

Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was quoted Saturday as saying he would be prepared to step down as head of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, only if that would bring about the decisive change he feels the party needs. The Italian news agency AGI said that Ocalan, who was arrested in Rome a month ago, clarified remarks he made to the Communist newspaper Il Manifesto in which he had appeared to be on the brink of resigning from the party he founded in 1978.

Greece said today that fugitive Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was in the hands of Kenyan authorities. "The Greek government . . . provided a place to stay in Kenya where he went after efforts to find refuge," the government said in a statement. It added that Ocalan decided to negotiate with Kenyan authorities, who took charge of him late Monday. "Since that hour his whereabouts have not been known," the statement said.

U.S. officials acknowledged Saturday that the United States worked for months to help Turkey arrest Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan. Officials confirmed the gist of reports appearing in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times saying that U.S. diplomatic pressure helped put Ocalan in flight from a haven in Syria and eventually into the arms of Turkish commandos. "We've been engaged diplomatically for months to bring him to justice," one U.S.

Italy and Germany agreed Saturday to make every effort to bring Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan to trial and to launch a European initiative to seek a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question in Turkey. The decision was reached at a meeting between German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini. An Italian Foreign Ministry statement said Fischer and Dini agreed that Bonn and Rome would "jointly take up every effort so that Ocalan [can] be brought to justice."

The head of Turkey's National Intelligence Agency, or MIN, said in remarks published Tuesday that it would be against Turkish interests to hang Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan, who was sentenced to death last year for treason. In an unprecedented briefing with selected national newspapers, Senkal Atasagun also said he is in favor of ending a ban on Kurdish-language broadcasting and of setting up a state-controlled television channel in Kurdish.

Unarmed Kurdish rebels in combat dress marched into Turkey from northern Iraq on Monday in a show of support for peace with the Turkish government. The eight rebels, along with 26 other Kurds, were immediately detained by Turkish paramilitary police after crossing the border gate at Habur. They were moved to a military battalion's headquarters for questioning by prosecutors, the state-run Anatolian news agency reported. Earlier, Kurds in northern Iraq celebrated with music and drums as the group left from a refugee camp, the news agency reported.