PKK THREATENS TURKEY-IRAN PIPELINE LINK

UPI Energy
August 28, 2006 Monday 9:18 AM EST

Members of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, have threatened
to blow up gas pipelines from Turkey to Iran unless Ankara agrees to
a cease-fire.

"Last Saturday, two Turkish jets shelled some of our bases in the
little Qandil," Haval Welat, a PKK official, told Sunday’s edition of
Iraq’s independent Aso newspaper. "The leadership has warned Turkey
and Iran to stop the military incursion. Otherwise, we will blow up the
gas pipelines linking Turkey and Iran as a first step of retaliation."

He also said Turkey had rejected the PKK’s call for a cease-fire.

Both Turkey and the United States regard the PKK as a terrorist
organization. The group is fighting for an independent Kurdish state
encompassing parts of Turkey, Iran and Syria and Armenia.

Iran, with an estimated 970 trillion cubic feet in proven natural
gas reserves, is the world’s No. 2 in reserves; Russia is No. 1.

Turkey is one of the largest customers of Iranian natural gas. In
2002, the two countries inaugurated a pipeline link. Exports of
Iranian natural gas to Turkey could reach 960 million cubic feet
per day by 2007, according to the Energy Information Administration,
the U.S. Department of Energy’s data arm.

Iran sees Turkey as a conduit for the sale of natural gas to Europe.