Uncertainty continues to surround the precise whereabouts of the controversial Kurdish leader Mr Abdullah Ocalan, who left Italy on Saturday afternoon, Paddy Agnew writes from Rome. The leader of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) has been at the centre of bitter tension between the Italian and Turkish governments since he arrived in Rome from Moscow on November 12th, allegedly in search of political asylum and the chance to highlight the plight of the Kurdish people.
Neither the Italian government nor PKK spokespersons were yesterday willing to reveal Mr Ocalan's whereabouts. Italian media speculation, however, suggested that the guerrilla leader had left for Moscow on Saturday as the first leg of a journey to a former Soviet republic, possibly Armenia.
Since his arrest shortly after his arrival, Mr Ocalan has been a thorn in the side of the centre-left government. The PKK leader is wanted by the Turkish government, who consider him a drug-trafficking terrorist, responsible for the deaths of nearly 30,000 people during a 15-year armed campaign for Kurdish autonomy in south-east Turkey.
Rome refused to extradite him to Turkey on the grounds of a constitutional ban on extradition to a country with the death penalty on its statute books. But equally, under pressure from the United States as well as Turkey, Italy refused to grant him political asylum and the limbo situation since he was freed before Christmas has been a major source of unease to the Italian government.