KADEK Dissolves
"KADEK has been disbanded to open the way for a new and more democratic organizational structure which will allow wider participation representative of the interests of the Kurdish people," said the statement signed by the general executive board.
The dissolution was approved unanimously at a KADEK congress in northern Iraq on October 26, the statement, also carried on the website of the pro-Kurdish Mesopotamia news agency, added.
KADEK is the direct successor of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party which fought a bloody struggle against Turkey for Kurdish-self-rule until September 1999, when it declared a unilateral ceasefire.
The ceasefire followed the capture in February 1999 of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence on a remote prison island in Turkey.
The PKK changed its name to KADEK in April 2002 and vowed to pursue democratic means to resolve the conflict with Turkey, but still has forces based in northern Iraq.
Tuesday's announcement came the day after it was revealed that US troops and Iraqi Kurdish border guards clashed over the weekend with suspected PKK rebels.
A local Kurdish fighter working for the Iraqi border guard was killed and 13 others were wounded in the confrontation near the Turkish frontier, a US army spokeswoman said Monday.
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul -- who has been lobbying for the United States to move against PKK guerrillas based in Iraq -- billed the shootout as the first armed confrontation between US forces and the Turkish Kurdish separatist movement. (NM)