Battle Rages Over Kurd Leader
Turkish troops pushed deep inside northern Iraq on Friday in an assault on rebels of jailed Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan despite demands from Baghdad that the offensive be stopped immediately.
Kurds angry at Turkey's arrest of their separatist hero and Greece's loss of him to Turkish special forces in Kenya staged protests in Iran, Lebanon and Romania. But the widespread and often violent demonstrations of the past week have subsided.
Meanwhile Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis is writing to other European Union leaders to explain how Greece harbored and lost Ocalan, he said in a statement on Friday.
Turkish newspapers gleefully reported the fall of three Greek cabinet ministers over the Ocalan affair.
"An Earthquake In Athens," said the Hurriyet daily.
Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos plus the interior and public order ministers were sacked Thursday as Greece came to terms with having harbored Ocalan and then lost him to Turkey.
Simitis, under fire at home over Ocalan's capture by Turkey after spending 12 days in Greek custody, said he would also ask his EU colleagues to take specific action to safeguard Ocalan's rights and secure his fair trial.
The fact Turkey captured its most wanted man in Kenya from under the nose of arch-foe Greece only added to the satisfaction for Ankara, which has long maintained that Athens supported Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Greece had stopped short of giving Ocalan asylum, fearing further tensions with arch-rival Turkey which blames him for a separatist war that has cost 29,000 lives.
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Thousands of Turkish troops backed by air power plunged more than nine miles into northern Iraq to attack Ocalan's PKK rebels, demoralized by the arrest of their leader.
Ankara's ties with Baghdad, already poisoned by the presence of U.S. warplanes in southern Turkey, were worsened by the cross-border assault.
"(The Iraqi government) demands that the Turkish government pull out its invading forces from inside Iraqi territories and to stop repeating such practices," the Foreign Ministry said.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry dismissed Iraq's criticism.
"We respect the territorial integrity of Iraq," a ministry spokesman told Reuters. "From time to time these operations have been carried out against the terrorist threat and they have always been of limited duration."
Pro-Ocalan demonstrations in more than 20 Greek and Kenyan missions largely ended by Thursday but Kurdish fury continued in Romania, where riot police used tear gas against 150 protesters trying to march on the Greek embassy in Bucharest.
Ocalan, 51, faces a possible death sentence if convicted, although Turkey has not executed anyone since 1984. Turkish newspapers said on Thursday that Ocalan, under questioning at the prison island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara, would appear for an initial hearing in the next 12 days.
©1999 CBS Worldwide Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Reuters contributed to this report