Turkey's PM pledges justice in rare southeast visit

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, May 7 (Reuters) Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan today made a rare visit to the mainly Kurdish southeast, where guerrilla violence has escalated, and said Ankara was committed to solving the region's problems.

His visit coincides with an upsurge in violence blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and troop reinforcements being sent to the region to deal with an expected increase in incursions from neighbouring Iraq, where Ankara says thousands of militants are based.

The latest attack in the poor and mountainous mainly Kurdish southeast was the bombing of a school bus carrying soldiers' children, which injured 17 last week.

''We are trying to bring about long-delayed justice as soon as possible. We want to eradicate imbalances between regions,'' he told a party conference, where he also condemned children being targeted by violence.

''We are hurrying with all our strength to make up for the errors of the past,'' he said. ''If we don't win together, we will be condemned to lose together,'' Erdogan, who released two white doves into the crowd, said.

Dozens of soldiers and suspected members of the PKK, which launched a campaign for a Kurdish homeland in 1984, have been killed in clashes in recent months, while the worst riots in more than a decade spread through the region about a month ago.

Prime ministerial visits to the southeast are rare and Erdogan's last visit in August marked a change in the government's attitude, as he said that democratic reforms were the answer to the region's problems.

The government has eased cultural and linguistic restrictions on the Kurds as part of its efforts to join the European Union, but Brussels has demanded more measures to combat poverty in the region.

Turkey's Kurds, who until the 1990s were banned from using their own language in public, live mostly in a region where unemployment is high and investment has been traditionally low, causing many to emigrate to the richer west of the country.

Today's visit also comes amid controversy over a new bill, which aims to toughen Turkey's anti-terrorism legislation and is due to be discussed again in a parliamentary commission this week.

Reuters SB DB2106