France arrests Kurds accused of "funding terrorism"

PARIS, Feb 5 (Reuters) French police have arrested 13 people believed to be members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on suspicion of money laundering and ''financing terrorism'', police said today.

Twelve Turks and one Australian, all of Kurdish origin, were arrested in various suburbs of Paris today morning on suspicion of ''association with wrongdoers in relation to a terrorist undertaking, financing terrorism and money laundering in an organised group with a view to financing terrorism''.

Banned in Turkey and listed by the European Union as a terrorist organisation, the PKK has been blamed for 30,000 deaths since 1984, when it began its armed struggle for a Turkish homeland.

''These are people we suspect of funding the PKK,'' a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutors' office said.

The arrests were part of an investigation that began last July when two Turks were arrested after trying to change 200,000 euros into dollars in a Paris bureau de change, police said.

All of those arrested were in France legally, police added.

Reuters DKA RN1731