From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: News--22 dec 92
Date: 29 Dec 1992 20:41:42 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
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12/22/92 News Contents :
   12/22 Azerbaijan : Caucasus Refugees Burrow In
   12/22 Germany Outlaws Neo Nazi Group
   12/22 TURKISH SOCCER STAR SENTENCED TO NINE YEARS JAIL
   12/21 TURKISH COUNCIL URGES TO EXTEND FORCE MANDATE FOR IRAQ

12/22 Azerbaijan : Caucasus Refugees Burrow In

   AKJABEDI, Azerbaijan (AP) -- In winters past, Nurshabel
Huseynova and her family burrowed holes in the mud to
protect sheep wintering in the pasture.
   They are living in those hovels now, with scarcely more
protection -- no clothing or medicine and only handouts to
eat.
   Huseynova and thousands of other Azerbaijanis were forced
to flee into the Akjabedi grasslands from their home in
Lachin, a border outpost in southern Azerbaijan that had
witnessed heavy fighting with Armenia.
   Mostly Christian Armenia and Muslim Azerbaijan have been
battling since 1988. The conflict, which began in Nagorno-
Karabakh, an Armenian enclave that sought independence from
Azerbaijan, has forced some 450,000 Azerbaijanis and 300,000
Armenians to flee villages and cities.
   Some of the refugees live in houses abandoned by other
refugees.
   But at Akjabedi, the former occupants of Lachin since May
have occupied 86,000 acres of land granted to them for
grazing by the former Soviet government eight years ago.
   During a recent visit, children trudged barefoot through
the mud as the adults, hugging at threadbare, tattered
clothes, pointed out their underground dwellings.
   "We are living in underground holes that used to shelter
our animals," said Mehtioglu Gulmamedov, a school teacher,
as a crowd of women and children pressed around him. "There
is no running water or clinic. This is an impossible place
to live in."
   "It was raining the day we left. Now it rains here and
conditions are getting worse every day."
   Nurshabeh Huseynova, her father, husband and three
daughters made their way to Akjabedi in a 200-mile, three-
day trek to skirt fighting.
   Mrs. Huseynova's 7-year-old daughter, Kheiransa, appeared
to have mumps, with a swollen neck and face, but there was
no doctor to make a diagnosis. Kheiransa's little sister,
Sayeda, had infected scratches on her face.
   "We have no water, no soap," Mrs. Huseynova said. "Some
people in nearby villages helped us, the government gave us
500 rubles (about $1) each with which I bought some sugar.
   "We sleep in this hole," she said, pointing to a slanting
entrance covered with straw leading to a tiny mud chamber a
few feet underground.
   The refugees have enough food, said Jean-Louis Jacot, a
Red Cross representative who was distributing blankets and
plastic sheeting to 500 people. The biggest problem, he
said, is protecting people from the freezing temperatures.
   "People can cope but with great difficulty," said Jacot.
   The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has set up a $2
million program to aid 53,000 Azerbaijani refugees, and has
provided $4 million for 92,000 Armenian refugees.
   The Azerbaijani government refuses to permanently house
the refugees, in the defiant belief that its army will win
back towns captured by Armenia.
   "We will not build proper houses here," said Fayek
Ismailov, Lachin's deputy mayor. "Even if we have to wait
three years to get Lachin back, we will."

12/22 Germany Outlaws Neo Nazi Group

   BONN, Germany (AP) -- A neo-Nazi group allegedly involved
in attacks on foreigners was banned Tuesday, the fourth such
group to be outlawed this month by German authorities.
   National Offensive, the newly banned group, is believed
to have about 140 members and has distributed anti-Semitic
propaganda and been involved in anti-foreigner violence,
said Interior Minister Rudolf Seiters.
   Right-wing radicals have carried out more than 2,100
attacks this year, most of them against foreigners, leaving
17 people dead and hundreds injured.
   Other neo-Nazi groups outlawed this month are the
Nationalistic Offensive, the German Alternative, and the
Alliance of German Comrades, which was banned on Monday.
   "With these bannings we are handing an unmistakeable
warning to extremists. We are making clear that the state
will not idly accept extremists' disgraceful acts," Seiters
said.
   The National Offensive has been operating mainly in the
states of Bavaria and Saxony, but has been active in other
areas as well.
   Explosives and weapons were found in raids on apartments
of the group's members' earlier this month, Seiters said.
   Police were continuing the raids Tuesday in seven of
Germany's 16 states, in search of more evidence to be used
against the group's members.


 12/22 TURKISH SOCCER STAR SENTENCED TO NINE YEARS JAIL

    ISTANBUL, Dec 22, Reuter - Former Turkish international
soccer player Tanju Colak was sentenced to nine years and
four months in jail on Tuesday for buying a smuggled luxury
Mercedes car, Anatolian news agency said.
    Colak, a leading striker with Fenerbahce who scored 10
goals in 31 internationals, was also fined 5.5 billion lira
($651,000) by an Istanbul court for knowingly buying a
smuggled car.
    He will not be be jailed until the verdict is approved
by the Supreme Court.
    Colak, 29, and married with two children, won the
European golden boot award in 1988 for scoring 39 goals and
helped his former club Galatasaray to reach the European Cup
semifinals a year later.

12/21 TURKISH COUNCIL URGES TO EXTEND FORCE MANDATE FOR IRAQ

    ANKARA, Dec 21, Reuter - Turkey's National Security
Council (NSC) urged on Monday that parliament extend for a
further six months the mandate of an allied force protecting
Iraqi Kurds from Baghdad, state run television said.
    "A consensus has been reached that the conditions in
northern Iraq are not stable enough to abolish the Provide
Comfort force," the television quoted an NSC statement as
saying.
    "Therefore, it would be beneficial for our national
interests that the task period of the Provide Comfort force
be extended for another six months," it said.
    Parliament is to vote on the extension this week before
the current six-month mandate ends on December 31.
    The multinational force of 77 fighter aircraft and
helicopters and 1,862 military personnel polices a no-fly
zone over northern Iraq, shielding the Kurdish-controlled
region from attack by the forces of President Saddam
Hussein.
    Turkish critics of the force, based at Incirlik air base
in the south, say it encouraged the emergence in October of
a federated Kurdish state in northern Iraq which they see as
a likely step to an independent Kurdish state.
    Turkey, battling an armed separatist insurgency in its
southeast by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), has said it will
not accept such an eventuality.
    The United States, Britain and France assured Ankara on
December 11 that they did not want the break-up of Iraq and
urged the extension of the force's mandate.
    Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel has indicated that his
government will present a positive recommendation but is
facing opposition and press misgivings on the continued
presence of the allied force.

   UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- More U.N. guards will be sent to
Iraqi border checkpoints to protect truck convoys carrying
aid to Kurds, U.N. officials announced Monday.
   The World Food Program on Friday announced a temporary
halt to the winter relief program for the Iraqi Kurds after
several Turkish trucks carrying relief supplies were damaged
by bombs believed planted by Iraqis.
   Kurdish officials say the Iraqis placed bombs aboard the
trucks while their drivers were taken away for questioning
at a checkpoint at Faidar, Iraq.
   Last year, a U.S.-led coalition force briefly occupied
northern Iraq after Saddam Hussein's forces crushed a
Kurdish uprising. To protect the Kurds, many of whom had
fled to Turkey or Iran, the coalition has prohibited the
Iraqi military from passing north of the 36th parallel.
   The United Nations has permission from Iraq to deploy up
to 300 guards in the country. About 200 are there now, all
in the northern Kurdish region except for eight in Baghdad.
   It wasn't decided how many new guards would be sent.
Presuming they get visas from Baghdad, the guards will be
sent within days to checkpoints at Faidar and Khazr on the
Iraq-Turkey border, said U.N. spokesman Joe Sills.
   Under Western protection, Iraq's 3.5 million Kurds have
established an autonomous government. But they have been
subject to harassment and embargoes by the Iraqi government,
leading to concerns about survival this winter.
   "This is a struggle against time because of the onset of
winter," said Jan Eliasson, the undersecretary-general for
Humanitarian Affairs. "We have to get food in as soon as
possible. ... We must avoid a disaster situation in the
winter in the next few days."
   In Ankara, Turkey's National Security Council urged the
government Monday to let Western warplanes remain in Turkey
at least through June to protect Iraqi Kurds. The government
usually heeds the council's advice.
   The 80-plane force, which includes 48 warplanes from the
United States, Britain and France, has been daily patrolling
north of the 36th parallel. The current mandate expires at
the end of the year.
   U.N. officials have not directly blamed Saddam's
government for the bombs planted on relief trucks. But in
Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher
did not hesitate to blame Baghdad.
   "Iraq is responsible for the sabotage and Iraq is also
responsible for the failure to provide safe passage, and
we'll have to look at what's necessary to ensure the safe
passage," Boucher said.
   World Food Program spokesman Francis Mwanza said Friday
in Rome that 71 trucks had been held in Dohuk, northern
Iraq, while the United Nations considered the program's
request for more security.

12/21 Sarajevo's Christmas Is Dismal

   SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- Kenan Ajanovic, a 9-
year-old Muslim boy whose father was killed in the war,
waited quietly for his turn with Santa, played by a Croatian
soldier on furlough.
   There was a present waiting for Kenan, a package of
vitamin-enriched biscuits and powdered food, culled from
humanitarian aid shipments.
   But Kenan said he had a special request for Santa -- to
stop the fighting.
   "If they end the war, maybe they will stop shooting. I
don't like it when they shoot," he said.
   Christmastime in Sarajevo, once a festive affair for all
faiths, is dismal this year. There's no electricity for
lights, no heat for the city's cathedral and little food for
festivities.
   For Sarajevans who try to put on a holiday dinner, the
menu will be meager. A traditional roast suckling pig is
beyond fantasy.
   Still, that has not stopped 30-year-old Diana Krajina
from insisting on some semblance of a Christmas feast.
   Krajina, a Catholic, began setting aside food from aid
packages in early November, and she plans to invite her
Muslim neighbors for a holiday meal.
   She'll serve soup with macaroni, canned fish, potato
salad and perhaps a Christmas bread if there is enough
flour. Desert will be "war cookies," little balls of bread
dipped in sugar.
   Krajina also found a few stray pine boughs for
decoration. But fuel for heating is so scarce that virtually
all branches have been burned instead of used for adornment.
   Gift-giving also is difficult in a city of burned-out
shops that once overflowed with holiday wares at
Christmastime.
   The merchants have sold whatever leftover stock they
could salvage to a few sidewalk vendors. They now display
strings of tinsel, costing the equivalent of $5 apiece.
   Dragana Sudzuka skipped the tinsel, but spent $15 on a
plastic dart gun for her 2-year-old son. "It's a morbid and
disgusting present, but my son is crazy about guns," she
said.
   As a Serb, she won't be celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25.
Under the calendar followed by the Serbian Orthodox Church,
the observance falls on Jan. 7.
   Sudzuka plans a party. "It's a means of resistance," she
said.
   In Sarajevo, mixed marriages and friendships among
Catholics, Orthodox Serbs and Muslims had traditionally
given their respective holidays a cosmopolitan flavor, with
everyone joining in celebrations.
   But Monsignor Vinko Puljic, archbishop for Sarajevo's
30,000 Catholics --mostly ethnic Croatians -- says this
year, he expects fewer non-Catholics at Christmas Mass.
   "The non-Catholics used to outnumber the Catholics, but I
don't expect them to come this year," he said. "No one wants
to do anything that might provoke his own people."



12/21  BOSNIA NO-FLY RESOLUTION TO GIVE SERBS ADVANCE
WARNING

    By Evelyn Leopold
    UNITED NATIONS, Dec 21, Reuter - Key Security Council
members on Monday worked on a resolution that will include a
warning period before military force is used against Serb
aircraft violating a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
    Some Europeans want about three to four weeks to give
their forces on the ground in Bosnia time to make plans in
order to protect themselves in case of retaliation. The
United States is said to prefer a shorter time span,
diplomats said.
    But the key question, apparently not yet settled in two
sets of talks between envoys from the United States,
Britain, France, Belgium and Russia, was the scope of the
enforcement.
    Washington wants to destroy offending aircraft on the
ground by bombing airports while the Europeans are more
conservative and are expected to succeed in softening the
U.S. position, the envoys said.
    Nevertheless, one diplomat involved in the talks said,
"I think it will all gel rather quickly."
    President George Bush and British Prime Minister John
Major said on Sunday they would go ahead with the
resolution, which may be adopted by the end of the week. But
they gave few more details than had emerged in discussions
over a French-initiated draft resolution last week.
    That draft, enforcing the no-fly zone that the Security
Council established in October, would authorise the United
States and its allies to send warplanes to patrol the
Bosnian skies with the right to shoot down any unauthorised
planes or helicopters.
    Britain and France want the resolution only to allow
"all necessary measures against fixed-wing and rotary wing
aircraft" that violate the ban.
    Washington, which has no ground troops in Bosnia,
favours language allowing countries to take "all necesary
measures to enforce in the event of further violations" of
the flight ban. This would permit its planes to shoot down
violators and attack Serbian-controlled airfields.
    So far airborne radar planes and military observers on
the ground have reported 327 violations since the council on
October 9 initiated the no-fly zone for military aircraft
over Bosnia, according to a U.N. report released on Monday.
    U.N. officials said most of the violations -- but not
all of them -- were from Serb aircraft, adding that planes
originating in Croatia had also flown over Bosnia and that
one airport, operated by besieged Bosnian Moslems, was
closed to U.N. monitors.
    The October 9 resolution succeeded in ending sporadic
combat missions in which Serbian planes bombed or strafed
Bosnian positions. But it has not stopped flights, mainly by
Serbian helicopters ferrying troops and ammunition around
the country or evacuating the wounded.
    Britain, and to a lesser extent, France had previously
expressed strong reservations to using allied warplanes,
fearing they could imperil their forces in Bosnia as well as
endanger existing humanitarian relief convoys.


 12/21  U.N. ORDERS GUARDS FOR RELIEF SUPPLIES TO KURDS

    By Evelyn Leopold
    UNITED NATIONS, Dec 21, Reuter - Secretary-General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali on Monday ordered U.N. guards deployed
at two checkpoints in Iraq to prevent further bombings of
trucks carrying relief aid to Kurds in the north of the
country.
    The lightly-armed guards, to be drawn from the 300
already in Iraq, are to travel on relief convoys and be
stationed at checkpoints between Kurdish areas and those
controlled by the Baghdad government in the northern towns
of Faidar and Khazr.
    On November 29, six relief aid trucks were damaged by
explosives. This was followed by the discovering of devices
before they exploded on another six trucks on December 7.
And on December 16, 10 trucks were damaged by explosive
devices and another six bombs were discovered. No one was
killed.
    Diplomats said about 30 guards would travel on the
trucks in uniform as well as inspect convoys at the point of
entry and exits into territory controlled by the Iraqi
government.
    Most of the Kurdish territory is controlled by Kurds but
to reach the main cities, U.N. convoys weave in and out of
areas controlled by the Iraqi government, which is where
U.N. officials suspect bombs were attached to the trucks.
    The decision to deploy them came after a demarche to
Iraq's U.N. ambassador Nizar Hamdoun on Friday by the United
States, Britain, France and Russia to protest the bombings.
    Boutros-Ghali said the United Nations had asked Iraq for
an immediate investigation of  series of bombings and said
it was Baghdad's responsibility to ensure security on
transit routes from Turkey.
    A statement said the U.N. chief "decided to assign U.N.
guards in Iraq to strengthen the protection of U.N. convoys
transporting humanitarian relief supplies in the northern
part of the country."
    Jan Eliasson, the U.N. undersecretary-general for
humanitarian affairs said he said he hoped the new system
would be in place in the next few days.
    The U.N. suspended aid operations for Kurds in the north
on Saturday, saying it wanted better security guarantees
from the Baghdad government.
    Britain, the United States and Turkey have all said the
Baghdad authorities, who oppose the autonomous state the
Iraqi Kurds set up in the north, are behind the explosions.
    Kurds in northern Iraq are under the protection of
allied planes based in Turkey. The Turkish parliament is due
to vote soon on renewing the force's mandate.
    Iraq has suggested a joint border inspection with the
United Nations and denied it was responsible for the bombs.
    The Iraqi foreign ministry in Baghdad also denied U.S.
television reports of an Iraqi troop build-up in the north
to prepare for an offensive against the Kurds, saying such
allegations surfaced every time the date for renewing the
allied mandate in Turkey approached.
    The ministry said the northern governorate of
Sulaimaniya, Dohuk and Irbil were being supplied with food
and fuel as normal, denying Kurdish and Western claims that
the areas are under blockade by Baghdad.
    The U.N. deliveries, which include food, kerosene and
seeds, for winter sowing are of great importance to the
Kurds as winter begins to bite in the north. U.N. officials
have said that without relief many might flee to
neighbouring countries.
    "This is a struggle against time," Eliasson said.