From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: News--24 dec 92
Date: 25 Dec 1992 02:41:33 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

2/24 TURKEY RENEWS ALLIED MANDATE FOR IRAQI KURDS
12/24 Turkey OKs Units To Help Kurds
12/24 AZERBAIJAN REPORTS HEAVY CASUALTIES IN BORDER CLASHES
12/24 KEY SERB SUPPLY LINE REPORTED CUT

    By Ayse Sarioglu
    ANKARA, Dec 24, Reuter - Turkey's parliament on Thursday
extended for six months the mandate of an allied force
protecting Iraqi Kurds from attacks by Iraqi troops.
    The 450-member house approved the government-proposed
extension, effective from January 1, by the comfortable
margin of 236 votes to 155, Anatolian news agency said.
    Operation Provide Comfort consists of 77 U.S., British
and French planes and helicopters at Incirlik in southern
Turkey and a small military liaison office in Zakho,
northern Iraq.
    "The extension of the force's mandate is to Turkey's
benefit," Foreign Minister Hikmet Cetin told parliament.
    The allied force patrols Kurdish-held territory and
keeps Iraqi planes out of the area north of the 36th
Parallel. Cetin said Iraq had 14 to 18 army divisions south
of the line.
    "Chaos...can arise in the area and Turkey could be faced
with another mass exodus (of Iraqi Kurds) as in 1991," he
said.
    "The Turkish armed forces can prevent this, but...they
may have to face Iraq and we don't even want to consider a
risk like this."
    Turkey has hosted Operation Provide Comfort since allied
forces created safe havens in northern Iraq in April 1991
after half a million Kurds fled to the Turkish border
following an abortive post-Gulf War uprising against Saddam
Hussein.
    "Human problems have emerged in northern Iraq with the
onset of heavy winter. The people are faced with hunger and
misery and Turkey is the only country through which aid can
flow," Cetin said.
    Turkey, he said, could not stand and watch human
suffering in northern Iraq at a time when Ankara was sending
troops to Somalia to join a multinational force to relieve
famine.
    Some Turkish newspapers have accused Operation Provide
Comfort of helping Turkey's Kurdish rebels or of promoting
the emergence of an independent Kurdish state in northern
Iraq.
    But Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel told a news
conference earlier that the force had conducted "no activity
aimed at damaging Iraq's territorial integrity or harming
Turkey."
    He said Turkey's separate consultations with its Western
allies and regional powers Syria and Iran had shown that all
of them were committed to keeping Iraq intact.
    Turkey, fighting Kurdish guerrillas in the southeast
since 1984, was alarmed when Iraqi Kurds announced in
October plans to set up a federated Kurdish state in
northern Iraq.
    "We can't say 'Let Baghdad bring down the sky on their
(Kurds) heads just because they may in the future form a
Kurdish state'," Demirel said.
    "It would be inhuman and these people are our brothers."

12/24 Turkey OKs Units To Help Kurds

   ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey on Thursday allowed a
Western air force based on its territory to protect Iraqi
Kurds from Saddam Hussein for another six months.
   The decision was taken with 236 votes to 155 at the 450-
member parliament. Earlier, the government called on the
legislature to approve the fresh mandate for the coalition
force.
   The 80-plane force, based at Incirlik, southern Turkey,
is made up of 48 warplanes from the United States, Britain
and France as well as support aircraft.
   The planes daily patrol the north of the 36th parallel
where the Gulf War allies have restricted Iraq's military
moves.
   The force has stayed to provide protection after U.S.-led
coalition ground troops occupied northern Iraq last year to
carve a safe homeland for the Kurds after Saddam's forces
crushed their rebellion.
   Under the west's military protection, the Kurds have set
up a form of autonomy in the area.
   The extended mandate for the western force came in the
wake of renewed tensions in the area over a recent series of
bomb attacks on Turkish trucks hauling U.N. relief supplies
to the Iraqi Kurds to help them survive a harsh winter and
Iraq's economic blockade.
   After accusations from the Kurds and the United States
that it had been responsible for the bombings, Iraq agreed
to the posting of more U.N. guards at Iraqi checkpoints
where the Trucks are controlled.
   But it refused to allow the guards to accompany the
convoys which pass through a stretch of Iraqi-controlled
territory to reach the Kurdish area.

12/24 AZERBAIJAN REPORTS HEAVY CASUALTIES IN BORDER CLASHES

    MOSCOW, Dec 24, Reuter - Azerbaijan's defence ministry
said on Thursday that up to 170 Armenians were killed or
wounded in fierce border clashes this week.
    A communique quoted by Azeri radio said the clashes
began on Tuesday in areas between the Kedabek district of
northwest Azerbaijan and Armeniags Krasnoselsk region.
    The Armenian foreign ministry lodged a strong protest
with the Azeri government after the fighting, saying troops
backed up by tanks and aircraft had invaded the Krasnoselsk
region.
    "There were numerous casualties among the peaceful
population," Armenia's mission in Moscow quoted the protest
as saying.
    At least 2,500 people have been killed in almost five
years of fighting between the two former Soviet republics
over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave
populated mostly by Armenians but under Azeri jurisdiction
since 1923.
    The conflict, the longest running and most vicious of
many to erupt in the Transcaucasus in recent years, has
defied all mediation efforts.
    The two sides frequently give conflicting accounts of
battles and independent accurate information on casualties
is virtually impossible to come by.
    Azeri radio, monitored by the British Broadcasting
Corporation, said 170 Armenians had been killed in the
latest clashes. But a defence ministry spokesman contacted
by telephone from Moscow estimated this as the number of
casualties.
    He said Azeri forces had moved into Krasnoselsk in
retaliation for Armenian attacks on villages in southern
Azerbaijan.
    "This was a lesson in revenge for the Armenians after
they occupied five villages in the Zangelan region," he
said.
    The spokesman said Azeri forces had now withdrawn from
Armenian territory.


12/24 KEY SERB SUPPLY LINE REPORTED CUT

    By Giles Elgood
    VITEZ, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dec 24, Reuter - Croatian
forces are reported to have cut a key Serb military supply
route in northern Bosnia after heavy fighting, U.N. sources
said on Thursday.
    The sources said reports from the area around the town
Brcko indicated that the so-called "northern corridor"
linking Serb forces in eastern and western Bosnia and Serb-
held territories in Croatia had been breached at about five
points.
    Croatian forces were apparently using the breaks in the
corridor to get their own aid supplies through to people who
had been cut off by the battle lines.
    The Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency said there had
been an "all-out" artillery and infantry attack on the Serb
defence line in Bratunac -- the second frontal assault on
Serb villages in the district in the past 10 days.
    It said Moslem artillery concentrated continuous fire on
the villages of Bjelovac, Voljevica, Hranca and Kravica on
Thursday.
    The Serb news agency SRNA also reported heavy fighting
in the area.
    SRNA said earlier that the corridor was open to traffic
but advised "extreme caution."
    Serb forces ringing the Moslem and Croatian enclave in
central Bosnia depend on the corridor for supplies of food
and military material. Fierce fighting was expected as the
Serbs struggled to reassert control over the route.
    "We expect there will be a lot of fighting up there
because they have got to get that route open," said a U.N.
officer.
    Serb forces in Bosnia were receiving some supplies by
helicopter but that could become difficult if the United
Nations uses force to police its no-fly zone over Bosnia,
the officer said.
    "If the no-fly zone is enforced that would give them
quite a large headache."
    Attacks by Moslem forces on Serb villages near the
Moslem enclave of Srebrenica, which had until recently
endured a 240-day siege, again cut off the town for U.N.
relief convoys.
    "It is not safe to take aid to Srebrenica," a U.N.
spokesman said.
    A British spokesman said British U.N. troops had
escorted a group of 59 Serb prisoners of war out of central
Bosnia. They were handed over to Spanish U.N. troops on
Wednesday and would eventually be flown home.
    The International Committee of the Red Cross said
Bosnian forces released 111 Bosnian Serbs, of whom 81 left
for neighbouring Montenegro and 30 decided to stay in
Bosnia.
    "The number of detainees released is much lower than the
actual number in the hands of the Bosnian government
forces," the ICRC said in a statement faxed to Reuters.
    "Despite the existing agreements, the Croat forces of
Bosnia-Herzegovina have yet to free any of the detainees
they hold," it added.
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