RUSSIA: VLADIMIR ZHIRINOVSKY KURDS PRESS CONFERENCE

(18 Nov 1998) Russian/Nat

Leading Russian politicians have reacted to the death of a Kurdish man who set himself on fire in the centre of Moscow.

The man, identified as Ahmed Tsyldyrym, 25, died overnight at Moscow's Sklifosofsky Institute of Critical Care.

A second man who also set himself on fire was in critical condition with kidney failure and severe burns.

The protest came as about 100 Kurdish residents observed a hunger strike to protest what they claim is an international conspiracy against Abdullah Ocalan, who leads the Kurdistan Workers Party, or P-K-K.

Nationalist leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, spoke out against Russian foreign policy, saying that while once supporting the Kurds, Russia was now abandoning them to the Kurds.

SOUNDBITE (Russia)
"Russia has abandoned the Kurds. At first she helped the Kurdistan Workers Party and encouraged them and then just dropped them -- so there you have our international policy. Billions like the Kurds have counted on Russia and then been let down, that we would have a different government, a different society -- one that would help the poor. But again we have just let them down. So let the Americans now save the Kurds."
SUPER CAPTION: Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Leader of Liberal Democratic Party

Liberal politician, Alexei Arbatov, said that Russia should do more to discourage human rights abuses on the Kurds but by no means should it support the formation of a Kurdish nation-state as that would bring about all-out war.

SOUNDBITE(English)
"As for the idea of a Kurdish independent state which would have to carve pieces from many states in the south in particular in Transcaucuses, Turkey and Iran."
SUPER CAPTION: Alexei Arbatov, Chairman of Duma National Security Committee

The P-K-K has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey, where it has been outlawed.

Some 37-thousand people have been killed in the 14-year-old conflict.

Ocalan was arrested last week in Rome on a Turkish warrant after stepping off a plane from Moscow, where he fled after being forced out of Syria.

Russia denied him asylum.

Ocalan is on trial in absentia in Turkey on charges of leading a terrorist organisation, threatening the country's territorial integrity and ordering killings.

The charges can bring the death penalty.

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