"ANKARA ACCUSED OVER KURDISH REFUGEES
By Vincent Boland
Published: March 8 2005 02:00 | Last updated: March 8 2005 02:00
Turkey's government was accused yesterday of misleading the European Union about progress made in resettling nearly 400,000 people displaced by the civil war between the army and Kurdish separatists in the 1980s and 1990s, writes Vincent Boland in Ankara. Human Rights Watch alleged the government had exaggerated the number of people returning to their villages and farms in the south-east of the country last year, just as EU political leaders were deciding whether to invite Turkey to join the EU. The organisation said the government's claim that a third of the estimated 378,000 mainly Kurdish refugees were being helped to return home was 'unreliable'. It said its own investigation showed that, in some places, the number was less than a fifth of the official estimates. "
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