September 2, 2003	Tuesday	Rajab 4, 1424

DIYARBAKIR (Turkey), Sept 1: Turkey’s main armed Kurdish rebel group on Monday called off its four-year-old unilateral ceasefire, saying Ankara’s crackdown against the separatists had forced it to take up arms again.

“At the present stage it has become impossible to keep up the process of a unilateral ceasefire,” the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) said in a statement carried by the Germany-based pro-Kurdish MHA news agency.

“We have made a new assessment of the situation and we are announcing that the unilateral ceasefire is ending as of Sept 1, and that the ceasefire can continue only as a bilateral one.”

The group — now renamed KADEK — declared the ceasefire in 1999 shortly after the capture of its leader, Turkey’s most-wanted man, Abdullah Ocalan, in the aim of pursuing a political resolution to the conflict.

Its leadership alleged Ankara had failed to respond with a reciprocal show of goodwill to the ceasefire, after nearly two decades of a conflict that has claimed over 36,000 lives.

But the separatists said “the Kurdish side is once again adopting a stance which will allow for peace.

“It is the Turkish government that will now decide whether it is peace or war.”

Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving out a life sentence on an isolated island prison in western Turkey, told a newspaper he would not attempt to stop the rebels if they decide to renew an all-out warfare against Ankara.—AFP