SIXTY-THREE people have been killed in clashes between government troops and Kurdish rebels in southeastern Turkey over the past two days, AFP reported. Turkish troops killed 42 Kurdish rebels near the city of Van, southeast of Ankara, after rebels had slain 14 village guards and two Turkish soldiers near the town of Gevas on Monday.
Clashes in the southeast have continued despite a unilateral Kurdish truce offer, which has been in place since early September. Turkish Defence Minister Ismet Sezgin said on Tuesday he believed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) camps in Syria had been closed down and the group's leader Abdullah Ocalan had fled to northern Iraq.
But Syria's information minister, Mohamed Salman, denied in an interview in Kuwait's Al-Qabas newspaper that the PKK had bases in Syria and said Ocalan had not set foot in the country for the past three months.
Tension between Syria and Turkey escalated in the past few weeks but is now being defused by Egyptian and Iranian mediation.
Bomber ties
US AEROSPACE giant Lockheed Martin has chosen Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) and other Israeli companies as its partner in a consortium to upgrade F-16 fighter bombers throughout the world, AP reported.
An IAI spokesman said the agreement will be signed today at an international business convention being held in Jerusalem, attended by representatives from more than 500 US corporations. Lockheed President Vance Coffman met Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yitzhak Mordechai on Tuesday to finalise the deal.
The average cost of upgrading an F-16 is about $3 million, depending on which avionics systems are installed. Since the 1970s, about 3,600 F-16s have been manufactured and Lockheed has orders for another 300 in the next five years.
Also due to be signed today is an agreement between the American Raytheon Systems Company and Elta, a subsidiary of IAI, on development, production and marketing of airborne early warning and command and control systems.
On Tuesday Boeing, another US aerospace giant, signed an agreement with IAI to boost cooperation on space technology. The agreement involves the formation of a 14-member joint committee comprising representatives from both sides.
Bush fires
SCORES of small bush fires spread in several parts of Lebanon for the second consecutive day on Tuesday, injuring four people and destroying 432 acres of pine forest and olive and citrus groves. Some 150 fires have been reported in areas ranging from the outskirts of Tripoli, north of Beirut, to villages south of the port city of Tyre.
Hundreds of firefighters, assisted by soldiers and civilians, battled fires around the southern provincial capital of Sidon, and UN peacekeepers deployed north of the border with Israel used helicopters to douse some fires and help evacuate villagers who wanted to leave their homes.
UN peacekeepers were forced to leave one of their positions when flames came within a few hundred metres of them in the coastal village of Mansoureh.
