Turkey refuses comment on Kurdish rebels` ceasefire decision

ANKARA, Aug 19 (AFP) - 12h12 - Turkish officials refused to comment Friday on a decision by the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for a one-month ceasefire, saying that the actions of a "terrorist" group are not up for evaluation. "It is out of the question for us to comment on this issue," Akif Beki, the spokesman of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told AFP.

A senior foreign ministry official, who requested anonymity, said that "it is not possible for us" to comment on the August 20-September 20 ceasefire, announced earlier in a written statement issued in Brussels.

"Those people are terrorists and it is not possible for us to qualify their actions either as positive or negative," he said.

Ankara, which considers the PKK a terrorist organization, has meticulously avoided any move that could imply accepting the group as an interlocutor.

It categorically rejects dialogue with the PKK and has banned several pro-Kurdish political parties for links with the rebels.

The PKK, blacklisted as a terror group also by the United States and the European Union, has markedly stepped up violence in the past several months after it called off a 1999 unilateral truce in June 2004 on the grounds that Ankara's reforms to expand Kurdish freedoms were insufficient.