Kurdish refugees return to Turkey from Iraq

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) -- More than 100 Kurds who fled Turkey in the early 1990s to escape fighting between the army and Kurdish separatists returned from Iraq on Saturday, security sources said.

Officials at the Habur crossing point on the Turkish-Iraqi border said 132 people returned under the supervision of the U.N. refugee agency. Most had been in refugee camps in Iraq since 1994.

About 8,000 Kurds fled Turkey between 1992 and 1994, many saying their villages were cleared and burned by Turkish troops to deny Abdullah Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels sanctuary and material support.

Turkish officials say the refugees fled under pressure from the PKK.

Fighting between Turkish forces and the PKK has dropped off dramatically since Ocalan, abducted and sentenced to death for treason by Turkey last year, called on his fighters to end their armed struggle and work politically to win cultural rights.

More than 30,000 people have died since the PKK launched an armed campaign for autonomy in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast in the mid 1980s.

Turkey rejects Ocalan's peace overtures as a ploy to spare him from execution, and says it will never negotiate with the PKK, which it deems a terrorist organization.

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