Roj Bash Kurdistan

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, May 6, 2006 (AFP) - 17h16 - A European Parliament delegate to Turkey urged separatist Kurds in the country to renounce violence, on a visit Saturday to the country's troubled southeastern region.

"Violence has no place in progressing the rights of Kurds," Dutch MEP Joost Lagendijk told journalists here ahead of a conference on civil rights in southeastern Turkey.

"They must clearly condemn violence and all terrorist activity," Lagendijk added. As vice-president of the parliament's joint Turkish-European commission, the MEP is closely involved in the debate on Turkish membership of the EU.

Violence in the region has flared this year, with numerous attacks by Kurdish militants against Turkish security forces.

A wave of fighting in March between Turkish security forces and the armed separatists of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) shook towns in the southeast and spread to Istanbul, leaving 16 people dead.

Several bomb attacks claimed by another Kurdish separatist group, the Kurdish Freedom Falcons (TAK), have also struck the west of the country since the start of the year.

Turkey, the United States and the European Union regard the PKK as a terrorist group. The conflict in Turkey has claimed more than 37,000 lives since the PKK in 1984 launched its campaign for an independent Kurdish homeland in the southeast.

Lagendijk said the traditional European sympathy for Kurds was waning as the violence increased and Turkey moved to redress discrimination against the ethnic minority.

"When you look back in the '80s and the '90s, there was a lot of sympathy in Europe... for the fight of the Kurds for their rights... and everybody turned a bit of a blind eye to the violence," he said later Saturday in comments in English.

But with Turkey now seeking EU membership it was "becoming a more democratic country", he said.

"I want, in a way, to warn the Kurds that if they let politics be determined by the PKK, they'll lose more and more sympathy in the EU."

Lagendijk criticised both the resurgence of Kurdish attacks and Turkey's deployment of troops near its border with Iraq, an area where the PKK has set up bases.

Turkey began talks with the EU in October 2005 on joining the 25-nation bloc. Requirements for Turkey to bring its laws into line with EU norms in order to join may oblige it to enhance the rights of minorities in the country.

Yes, but theyve got to understand the PKK is fighting because it wants basic rights