World

Syria Blinks At Turkey Threats

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 21, 1998 / 11:04 AM EDT / CBS

Syria has pledged to shut down Kurdish rebel camps in its territory and in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, ending a weeks-long standoff that some feared could have ignited a regional conflict.

Under the agreement signed Tuesday by Turkish and Syrian officials, Syria also agreed not to let Kurdish guerrillas stage cross-border attacks on Turkey, Foreign Minister Ismail Cem told reporters.

He said Syria would brand the Kurdistan Worker's Party, or PKK, a "terrorist organization" and would not let PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan into Syria.

"An important foreign support to terrorism has thus been eliminated," Cem said, adding that Turkey will watch closely to see that Syria lives up to its pledges.

Tensions between neighbors Turkey and Syria had been running high for the past few weeks after Ankara suggested it might resort to military action to stop what it denounced as Syria's sheltering of Kurdish rebels.

The agreement was signed by Turkish foreign ministry official Ugur Ziyal and Gen. Adnan Badr Al Hassan of Syria.

Earlier, Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz said Ocalan, the rebel leader, was no longer in Syria but in Russia, and Turkey had requested his extradition.

In Moscow, the foreign ministry said it had no information about Ocalan entering Russia.

Ocalan told a Kurdish news agency Monday that he was somewhere in Kurdistan, a region which stretches over parts of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

Ocalan's PKK has been fighting for autonomy in Turkey's southeast since 1984 in a war that has cost the lives of 37,000 people. Turkey says the PKK had several camps in Syria and in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.

Analysts believed that Turkey might have resorted to pinpoint attacks on rebel targets in Syria or Lebanon had the security talks failed.

Turkey said Damascus and Ankara reached a deal at secret talks on Tuesday night in southern Turkey.

Turkey launched a vociferous campaign against Syria almost three weeks ago, threatening military action if Damascus did not act against the PKK, which has been fighting for the last 14 years for autonomy in eastern Turkey. Syria has denied any link with the PKK.