The book, “The first life of Angela M.”, says that Merkel, who will seek a third term as chancellor in a federal election in September, was responsible for Marxist-Leninist education in a unit of the state’s youth wing, in a role that went beyond the cultural duties she has previously spoken of.

Asked about the claims late on Sunday after a screening of her favorite film, a 1973 East German love story, Merkel said she had always spoken openly and to the best of her memory.

“I can only fall back on my memories. You just have to accept this… if something else turns up, then I can live with it,” said the 58-year-old chancellor. “What is important to me is that I never kept anything secret.”

The book’s claims are unlikely to affect Merkel’s chances of re-election but they highlight how enigmatic she remains for many Germans after nearly eight years in power.

German media have had a field day printing pictures of Merkel, who is extremely protective of her private sphere, as a willowy 20-something on Baltic beach holidays, tending a camp fire or drinking with student friends, as commentators try to fathom her early political persuasions.

Merkel joked there may be other aspects of her earlier life to be unearthed: “It is always the case that when something emerges, which of course from the perspective of the former West Germany looks very different, then people say ‘she hasn’t told us this yet’ and ‘she hasn’t told us that yet’.”

“I don’t know – maybe there are other things I didn’t talk about because no one ever asked me.”

Merkel was 35 when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and was working as a scientist at an academic institute. She has described her early life as non-political, in contrast to German President Joachim Gauck, a former East German pastor who vigorously opposed the regime.

While at the science research institute Merkel said she was a cultural official for the Free German Youth (FDJ), the movement nearly all East German youngsters joined as teenagers.

Commenting on her role in a 2004 book, Merkel said she took it to get out more often, particularly as her then husband mostly wanted to stay at home. It entailed organizing outings, readings by young Soviet writers and getting theatre tickets.

The new book repeats previous claims that the role was as an “Agitation and Propaganda (agitprop) functionary” and was at a higher hierarchical level than Merkel had previously stated.

Asked in 2004 about an “agitprop” role, Merkel said: “I cannot remember agitating in any way whatsoever. I was responsible for culture.”

In its heyday, the FDJ, whose members wore blue shirts and pledged to be “ready for peace and socialism”, had more than 2 million members. East Germany’s long-time leader Erich Honecker was a former leader of the FDJ, as was his successor Egon Krenz.

(Additional reporting by Andreas Rinke and Reuters television, editing by Gareth Jones and Alistair Lyon)

Outside the high-security court room, where dozens had queued from before dawn to secure one of the few public places, hundreds of police stood guard, clashing briefly with protesters who said they had a right to follow one of Germany’s most hotly-anticipated court cases.

The trial of 38-year-old Beate Zschaepe was adjourned until May 14th, after defense lawyers delivered motions objecting to the court’s chief judge, accusing him of bias. The court will now consider those motions.

The chance discovery of the gang, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), which had gone undetected for more than a decade, forced Germany to acknowledge that it had a more militant and dangerous neo-Nazi fringe than previously thought and wrecked the careers of top domestic intelligence officials.

Zschaepe is charged with complicity in the shooting of eight Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman in towns across Germany between 2000 and 2007, as well as two bombings in immigrant areas of Cologne and 15 bank robberies.

Her two presumed male accomplices both committed suicide in 2011. She faces life imprisonment.

Zschaepe appeared in court with her long, glossy hair worn loose and with large hoop earrings, in sharp contrast to the surly mugshots that have been splashed over German media. She chatted frequently with her defense lawyers, sharing gum, tossing her head and occasionally smiling.

“She seemed to enjoy the attention,” said a lawyer representing the families of the victims.

Four other male defendants charged with assisting the NSU were more casually dressed, one entering in sunglasses.

Defense lawyers immediately challenged the presiding judge’s impartiality for ordering them but not some other participants to be searched thoroughly before entering the Munich court.

“This implies the defense lawyers are so stupid they might bring forbidden objects into the court,” said attorney Wolfgang Stahl, adding that Judge Manfred Goetzl seemed to suspect the defense team might pose a security threat.

POST-WAR LANDMARK

The case has shaken a country that believed it had learned the lessons of the past, and has reopened a debate about whether Germany must do more to tackle racism and the far right.

“With its historical, social and political dimensions, the NSU trial is one of the most significant in post-war German history,” lawyers for the family of the first victim, flower seller Enver Simsek, said in a statement.

Outside the courthouse German-Turkish community groups and anti-racism demonstrators held up banners including one that read: “Hitler-child Zschaepe, you will pay for your crimes”.

Members of the public gasped when the brother of one of the defendants, himself described in an intelligence report as a former neo-nazi youth leader, entered the gallery in the afternoon.

The existence of the gang came to light in November 2011 when the two men believed to have founded the NSU with Zschaepe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, committed suicide after a botched bank robbery and set their caravan ablaze.

In the charred vehicle, police found the gun used in all 10 murders and a grotesque DVD claiming responsibility for them, in which the bodies of the victims were pictured with a cartoon Pink Panther totting up the number of dead.

After the suicides, Zschaepe is believed to have set fire to a flat she shared with the men in Zwickau, in east Germany. Four days later, she turned herself in to police in her hometown of Jena, saying: “I’m the one you’re looking for.”

For the victims’ families, the trial’s opening was difficult encounter with a woman whose resolute silence since her arrest has left people struggling to make sense of her motives. A day of legal procedural wrangling was also a disappointment for families who have waited for years to find out the truth.

Hearings are scheduled into early 2014, with the trio’s relatives due to testify.

As teenagers in Jena, the trio were known to authorities to be involved in racist hate crimes and bomb making, but they escaped arrest and assumed new identities.

Prosecutors say they chose shopkeepers and small business owners as easy targets to try to hound immigrants out of Germany. Some of the victims’ relatives came under suspicion because police simply did not consider a far-right motive.

The German parliament is conducting an inquiry into how the security services failed for so long to link the murders or share information, despite having informers close to the group.

The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency resigned last year after it emerged that files documenting the use of informers in the far right had been destroyed after the discovery of the NSU.

Politicians have accused the intelligence agencies of being “blind in the right eye” and of focusing so much on Islamist groups that they overlooked the threat from the far right.

The trial had been postponed by two weeks after an uproar over the court’s failure to guarantee Turkish media a seat.

(Additional reporting by Joern Poltz and Reuters television in Munich; Writing by Alexandra Hudson and Stephen Brown in Berlin; Editing by Peter Graff)

The chance discovery of the gang, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), which had gone undetected for more than a decade, has forced Germany to acknowledge it has a more militant and dangerous neo-Nazi fringe than previously thought, and exposed staggering intelligence failings.

The trial in Munich will focus on 38-year-old Beate Zschaepe, who is charged with complicity in the murder of eight Turks, a Greek and a policewoman between 2000-2007, as well as two bombings in immigrant areas of Cologne, and 15 bank robberies.

“With its historical, social and political dimensions the NSU trial is one of the most significant of post-war German history,” lawyers for the family of the first victim, flower seller Enver Simsek, said in a statement.

The case has profoundly shaken a country that believed it had learned the lessons of its past, and has reopened an uncomfortable debate about whether Germany must do more to tackle the far-right and lingering racist attitudes.

Four others charged with assisting the NSU will sit with Zschaepe on the bench.

DOUBLE SUICIDE

The existence of the gang only came to light in November 2011 when the two men believed to have founded the NSU with Zschaepe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, committed suicide after a botched bank robbery and set their caravan ablaze in the eastern town of Eisenach.

In the charred vehicle, police found the gun used to murder all 10 victims. They also found a grotesque DVD presenting the NSU and claiming responsibility for the killings. In it the bodies of the murder victims are pictured while a cartoon Pink Panther tots up the number of dead.

After her companions’ suicides, Zschaepe is believed to have set fire to a flat she shared with the men in Zwickau, 180 km (110 miles) away, and gone on the run. Four days later she turned herself in to police in her hometown of Jena, saying “I’m the one you are looking for.”

For the victims’ families the trial will be the first chance to come face to face with Zschaepe, a woman whose troubling, blank expression and resolute silence since her arrest has left people struggling to make sense of her motives.

The trial offers a chance for the woman dubbed “Nazi bride” in the media to break her silence, but few think she will.

Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011, wrote to Zschaepe in May 2012, addressing her as “Dear Sister” and urging her to use the trial to spread far-right ideology, according to German media.

Hearings are scheduled into early 2014, and witnesses due to appear include Zschaepe’s estranged relatives and the parents of Mundlos and Boehnhardt.

FAMILIES’ GRIEF

Prosecutors say the gang chose people running small businesses or shops as easy, vulnerable targets, in an attempt to terrify migrants and hound them out of Germany.

Some of the relatives even came under suspicion themselves because police simply did not consider a far-right motive.

“All the relatives have the huge problem that they were never treated as victims. During the investigations they were either considered suspects, or as relatives of criminals,” said lawyer Angelika Lex.

The start of the trial comes as a relief to families, after it was postponed by a fortnight due to the court’s poor handling of media access. It initially did not guarantee any Turkish media a courtroom seat, despite the number of Turkish victims.

This prompted a successful complaint by a Turkish newspaper and the Munich court was ordered to redistribute seats, which it did via a lottery.

While judges try Zschaepe and the NSU’s suspected accomplices, Germany’s lower house of parliament is conducting its own inquiry into the institutional failings.

Germany’s patchwork of intelligence agencies are set to undergo reforms, after the inquiry found they failed to share information and neglected the far-right threat. The head of domestic intelligence resigned last July.

The trio had been known to authorities during their teenage years in Jena, for their racist hate crimes and bomb making, but had managed to escape arrest and assume new identities.

(Additional reporting by Reuters television in Munich; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

With a federal election just under five months away, Merkel’s conservatives are strongest in the polls, yet she needs the Free Democrats to build on their recent recovery from three years of dismal ratings if she is to see off the opposition, who are neck and neck with her center-right bloc.

Without the FDP, Merkel would have to chose an alternative coalition partner to secure a third term in office.

The weekend congress, in which the business-friendly party set out its election manifesto of simplified taxes, rigid fiscal discipline, and sector-specific minimum wages, will have given Merkel heart.

The FDP, whose ugly infighting and amateurish gait saw voters desert them in droves in recent years, put on a spirited show at the conference under the banner, “So Germany stays strong”.

A thumping theme tune kicked off the event, with the refrain: “I’m doing better … getting tougher”.

“This is the best government for Germany, and will be again for the next four years,” said Rainer Bruederle, the party’s lead election candidate, to cheers and applause.

“We have always made the Christian Democrats better,” he continued, reeling off FDP achievements such as abolishing the draft, reducing household costs, preventing euro bonds and rescue packages for private firms with state funds.

A confident young chairman Philipp Roesler, who in the past has appeared hounded and tense, ridiculed the opposition Greens, as an outdated, musty bunch who obstruct all progress.

He portrayed the Social Democrats as spendthrifts who would raise taxes and borrowing and threaten to drag Germany into the kind of difficulties experienced by euro zone peers.

“Our composure over the last months and the style we’ve shown, these have won us back the trust of voters,” Roesler told an applauding crowd.

The FDP still needs its new-found vigor to translate into a surge in ratings, after a slump from 14.9 percent in 2009.

A new poll by Emnid out on Sunday put the FDP at 5 percent, meeting the threshold needed to win seats in parliament. It also showed the center-right and opposition center-left both neck-and-neck on 42 percent, as Merkel’s conservatives shed points after a tax scandal.

SOCIAL CONSCIENCE

Party leaders averted a rebellion to push through a new pledge for minimum wages for non-unionized workers specific to sectors and regions, in a position similar to Merkel’s.

Around 5 million workers in Germany – some 16 percent of all employees – earn less than 8.50 euros an hour, which is the minimum wage the center-left opposition wants to see.

The FDP opposes a blanket minimum wage, but Roesler argued that as a matter of social conscience the party should protect workers from pay as low as 3 euros an hour, without endangering jobs and alienating traditional support from business.

“We’re on the right path now, with the right messages,” said FDP federal lawmaker Jimmy Schulz.

“There is a lot of whinging in Germany, but I’m sure people will realize how good we’ve got in Germany compared to other European countries and will stick with the center-right.”

Andreas Becker, a regional party chairman in Giessen, said he was disappointed by the new minimum wage decision but didn’t think it would cause new splits. He dismissed the poor poll ratings, saying the party always bettered them in actual votes.

Pollsters say the FDP – dubbed the party of tax advisers and dentists – has an image problem which often means voters are reluctant to declare their support but prove loyal in the end.

“I’m very optimistic indeed about what I’ve seen. We hit the right message. We have a healthy economy, very low unemployment and are really living on an island of prosperity here,” said one 33-year-old delegate.

“Voters are shy creatures, but they will appear in the end.”

(Additional reporting by Thorsten Severin; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

They are part of a touring exhibition staged by German security services to educate youth on the mutating threat of neo-Nazism. It is a task given extra urgency by the unnerving discovery 18 months ago of a neo-Nazi cell that carried out execution-style murders unnoticed for almost a decade.

Organized by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV), the exhibition – including rueful video testimonies from former neo-Nazis – aims to raise awareness of an ever-adapting and increasingly tech-savvy far right.

It is another example of a decades-long determination by German authorities to ensure the ideology that drove Hitler’s Third Reich and the Holocaust gains no serious new foothold in their prized post-war democracy.

One display in the exhibition that has left youngsters aghast is a neo-Nazi version of the board game Ludo in which players, with rolls of the dice, propel their pieces as “Jews” into death camps as quickly as possible.

“The far right’s attempts to recruit young people pose a huge danger to society and to our state, as well as to the people who devote themselves to its perverted ideology,” BfV chief Hans-Georg Maassen said in an introduction to the exhibit.

“Not just the state but all social actors must join the fight against extremism. And to engage you need knowledge.”

The appetite for such knowledge increased with the unearthing of the National Socialist Union (NSU), a neo-Nazi cell created in the late 1990s by three youths that went on to commit 10 murders, utterly undetected.

The NSU’s existence came to light in November 2011 after two members committed suicide following a bungled armed robbery. The trial of the third, Beate Zschaepe, 38, begins next week.

The case prompted finger-pointing over law-enforcement authorities’ missed chances to apprehend the gang, botched investigations, and what critics called a complacent, entrenched disregard for the threat of the far-right.

The BfV, in particular, was accused of being more worried about protecting its informers than acting on tip-offs and of focusing on Islamist threats at the expense of neo-Nazis.

But, in an extraordinary example of contact between a secret service and ordinary people, BfV agents now tour Germany to show schoolchildren how easy it can be to be lured by the far right.

MUTATING THREAT

The exhibition, which began in 2004 but was reworked after the NSU affair and has been seen by some 150,000, just passed through the east German town of Eberswalde, north of Berlin.

Eberswalde holds the grim distinction of being the site of the newly reunited Germany’s first racially motivated murder in 1990, when a 28-year-old Angolan man was killed by a mob.

The dummy of a skinhead neo-Nazi harks back to the time when Eberswalde Mayor Friedhelm Boginski was a teacher and confronted almost daily with swastikas on buildings and school books.

“That murder changed our town,” he recalled. “People realized they must stand up and show courage towards neo-Nazis.”

That is one of the reasons neo-Nazis now choose to be more inconspicuous. The second neo-Nazi dummy drives home that point.

It sports the dark scruffy clothes that are the typical garb of leftist agitators. In fact, Germany’s far right is highly adaptable, embracing many subcultures such as rap and graffiti.

One group, the Unsterblichen (Immortals), uses social media to coordinate night-time processions, walking through towns with flaming torches and wearing masks to intimidate residents.

“Most of the schoolchildren we are explaining this to will already be familiar with it,” said Dieter Utermoehlen, a member of the BfV who accompanies the roving exhibition.

“How kids react depends on their level of education. Typically there will be one or two who don’t pay any attention.”

POSITIVE REACTION

Although the exhibition drew small left-wing protests in late 2011 due to anger that the BfV did not address its failings regarding the NSU in the show, the feedback is largely positive.

For teachers, it can be a vivid complement to class studies of Nazi history and trips to concentration camps. One young visitor voiced “upset at how much hate people can feel”. Other pupils have expressed shock at harsh neo-Nazi music and said they had become more aware of the meanings of neo-Nazi symbols.

A think-tank study last year raised a stir in reporting that xenophobia was still deeply rooted in parts of German society.

Within the formerly Communist east, 15.8 percent of people displayed far-right thinking. In the former West, 7.3 percent.

In 2011 authorities estimated there were 23,400 far-right adherents in the country of 82 million, down slightly from 2010, though the number of those considered violent rose to 9,800.

Zschaepe, the surviving NSU cell member, faces charges of complicity in the murder of eight ethnic Turks, a Greek and a policewoman, two bombings in Cologne and 15 bank robberies.

Nigel Copsey, a professor in the far-right research center of Britain’s University of Teesside, said early intervention in a child’s education can be effective but the message had to be reinforced at home by family and peers, and repeated often.

“It is important to have ethnic minorities involved, as personal contact is key to breaking down racist myths and stereotypes,” Copsey said.

The exhibition ends with testimonials from those who have left the neo-Nazi scene and advice on who to turn to.

“I grew disillusioned, then everything collapsed like a house of cards,” said one, his face and voice disguised.

“I think people find this cool, think it offers some kind of future. But how could an ideology which is almost 100 years old and which failed so utterly back then offer anything at all?”

(Editing by Gareth Jones and Mark Heinrich)

Merkel’s Christian Democrats are riding high in the polls yet she needs the Free Democrats (FDP) to consolidate their comeback from the depths of voter distrust if she is to see off the opposition Social Democrats and Greens, who are almost as strong as her center-right bloc.

At the congress in Nuremberg, the pro-business party will settle its manifesto and decide a position on the minimum wage – a debate that cuts to the heart of its liberal values and could provoke a rebellion against party leaders.

Around 5 million workers in Germany – some 16 percent of all employees – earn less than 8.50 euros an hour, which is the minimum wage the center-left opposition wants to see.

The FDP, also known as the Liberals, has long opposed a minimum wage, arguing it smacks of a planned economy and could alienate its traditional business and professional clientele.

But party chairman Philipp Roesler is now arguing for a minimum pay level in sectors or regions where workers are not unionized – similar to Merkel’s viewpoint.

With FDP traditionalists such as the party leader in the state of Saxony, Holger Zastrow, arguing it would be unworkable and threaten jobs, there is the risk of the kind of surprise attack on Roesler that has characterized recent congresses.

But having closed ranks and stopped the infighting that has repelled voters since Merkel turned to her traditional coalition partners in 2009, the party seems determined to present a united, electable front.

“We played the clown for three and a half years. Now it is somebody else’s turn,” a high-ranking FDP party member said.

The chancellor can certainly feel more encouraged now about her chances of continuing with her preferred coalition ally than at the start of the year.

The party took heart from an unexpectedly strong state election result of 9.9 percent in lower Saxony in January, when the polls had indicated it might struggle to breach the 5 percent threshold needed to get a seat in the state assembly.

Today, fighting talk dominates and the FDP is keen to profile itself as a party of fiscal discipline, lower taxes and liberal social values.

“Some in Europe are hoping for a change in government in Berlin, because they don’t want to consolidate anymore, and want to get back to spending,” FDP Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle warned in one newspaper, playing on German frustrations that they have to pay to keep euro zone peers afloat.

Nationally, the party is still shown at around 4-6 percent, a dramatic fall from its 14.9 percent in the 2009 election.

However, pollsters say the FDP – dubbed the party of tax advisers and dentists – has an image problem which often means voters are reluctant to declare their support publicly but prove loyal on election day, as happened in Lower Saxony.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

Saleh Muslim, head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said a recent wave of Syrian army attacks may have been prompted by non-aggression pacts reached between Kurds and some moderate factions in the rebel forces.

Another possible reason, he told Reuters in an interview, was that Assad feared Turkey – which has harbored Syrian rebels and called on him to quit – could also aid Syrian Kurds after entering peace talks with its own restive Kurdish minority.

“Maybe the (Syrian) government was bothered about these agreements. We also had such agreements with some small groups in Aleppo, and so because of that they bombed our areas,” Muslim told Reuters in an interview in Berlin.

“Maybe will think we are getting some help from Turkey, but this is not true.”

Eleven civilians were killed when a Syrian warplane bombed a Kurdish village in the oil-producing province of Hasaka in northeastern Syria on Sunday, Kurdish activists said. It was the biggest loss of Kurdish life from government attacks since the start of the two-year-old uprising against Assad.

A Kurdish district of the northern city of Aleppo, Sheikh Maqsoud, has also been battered by air strikes that have killed 47 civilians over the last 15 days, Muslim said.

“From the beginning we decided not to be a part of this blind fighting going ahead between Damascus and others … Our policy has been self defense, the right to protect ourselves, protect our Kurdish areas.”

KURDISH-ARAB TENSIONS

Mistrust between Syria’s Sunni Muslim Arab majority and its Kurds, who comprise an estimated 9-10 percent of the population and are also largely Sunni, deepened as the Sunni-led uprising gathered steam. In the process, Kurds asserted control in parts of the northeast where their community predominates.

Arab figures in the opposition are suspicious that the Kurds may set up an autonomous province spanning those areas.

For their part, Syrian Kurdish politicians accuse the Arab anti-Assad opposition of ignoring Kurdish rights and seeking to dominate the oil-producing northeast, which accounts for a large proportion of Syria’s crude production.

“The Kurdish provinces are rich provinces; everyone is trying to get these areas under their control. Maybe not just Assad’s forces, maybe also others in future,” Muslim said.

In February a ceasefire was signed between Syrian rebels and a Kurdish militia, the Popular Protection Units (YPG), who had been clashing for months in a town near the Turkish border.

Muslim said YPG forces were training in the Kurdish-controlled areas of Derik, Kobani and Afrin. They had more than 10,000 fighters, he said, and could call on most of the Kurdish population for support. Kurds had started fighting back against government forces after being attacked, he added.

Asked if the Kurds could yet join forces with the Sunni Arab-led Free Syrian Army, Muslim said this could happen only if the FSA committed to a democratic, secular Syria. But, he said, the FSA includes radical Islamic Salafists and jihadists and only a fraction of it is native Syrian.

Syria’s conflict started with mainly peaceful demonstrations but descended into a civil war in which the United Nations says at least 70,000 people have been killed. Islamist militants have emerged as the most potent of the anti-Assad insurgents.

Asked about PYD aims, Muslim said Syrian Kurds hoped to achieve democratic self determination. “It is not like classical autonomy, we don’t want to draw any borders, also because we have half a million Kurds living in (the capital) Damascus.”

An end to the violence could be achieved with a political resolution, he said, but he feared the Arab League had chosen the route of prolonged armed conflict in Syria.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Saleh Muslim, head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said a recent wave of Syrian army attacks may have been prompted by non-aggression pacts reached between Kurds and some moderate factions in the rebel forces.

Another possible reason, he told Reuters in an interview, was that Assad feared Turkey – which has harboured Syrian rebels and called on him to quit – could also aid Syrian Kurds after entering peace talks with its own restive Kurdish minority.

“Maybe the (Syrian) government was bothered about these agreements. We also had such agreements with some small groups in Aleppo, and so because of that they bombed our areas,” Muslim told Reuters in an interview in Berlin.

“Maybe Assad will think we are getting some help from Turkey, but this is not true.”

Eleven civilians were killed when a Syrian warplane bombed a Kurdish village in the oil-producing province of Hasaka in northeastern Syria on Sunday, Kurdish activists said. It was the biggest loss of Kurdish life from government attacks since the start of the two-year-old uprising against Assad.

A Kurdish district of the northern city of Aleppo, Sheikh Maqsoud, has also been battered by air strikes that have killed 47 civilians over the last 15 days, Muslim said.

“From the beginning we decided not to be a part of this blind fighting going ahead between Damascus and others … Our policy has been self defence, the right to protect ourselves, protect our Kurdish areas.”

KURDISH-ARAB TENSIONS

Mistrust between Syria’s Sunni Muslim Arab majority and its Kurds, who comprise an estimated 9-10 percent of the population and are also largely Sunni, deepened as the Sunni-led uprising gathered steam. In the process, Kurds asserted control in parts of the northeast where their community predominates.

Arab figures in the opposition are suspicious that the Kurds may set up an autonomous province spanning those areas.

For their part, Syrian Kurdish politicians accuse the Arab anti-Assad opposition of ignoring Kurdish rights and seeking to dominate the oil-producing northeast, which accounts for a large proportion of Syria’s crude production.

“The Kurdish provinces are rich provinces; everyone is trying to get these areas under their control. Maybe not just Assad’s forces, maybe also others in future,” Muslim said.

In February a ceasefire was signed between Syrian rebels and a Kurdish militia, the Popular Protection Units (YPG), who had been clashing for months in a town near the Turkish border.

Muslim said YPG forces were training in the Kurdish-controlled areas of Derik, Kobani and Afrin. They had more than 10,000 fighters, he said, and could call on most of the Kurdish population for support. Kurds had started fighting back against government forces after being attacked, he added.

Asked if the Kurds could yet join forces with the Sunni Arab-led Free Syrian Army, Muslim said this could happen only if the FSA committed to a democratic, secular Syria. But, he said, the FSA includes radical Islamic Salafists and jihadists and only a fraction of it is native Syrian.

Syria’s conflict started with mainly peaceful demonstrations but descended into a civil war in which the United Nations says at least 70,000 people have been killed. Islamist militants have emerged as the most potent of the anti-Assad insurgents.

Asked about PYD aims, Muslim said Syrian Kurds hoped to achieve democratic self determination. “It is not like classical autonomy, we don’t want to draw any borders, also because we have half a million Kurds living in (the capital) Damascus.”

An end to the violence could be achieved with a political resolution, he said, but he feared the Arab League had chosen the route of prolonged armed conflict in Syria.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Lying face-up on the floor of a large waiting room in the Kurdish Information Centre was the body of Leyla Saylemez, 25. Blood had trickled from her nose and mouth. A few paces behind her, partly hidden by a coffee table, were the tangled bodies of two comrades: Fidan Dogan, 32, a prominent spokeswoman for Kurdish issues in France, and Sakine Cansiz, 55, a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a bloody 30-year struggle for Kurdish autonomy from Turkey.

All three women had all been shot at close range, investigators later said. They bore frozen, stunned expressions, the friend who discovered the bodies told Reuters, which has uncovered new details about a case that may affect the peace process between Turkey and the PKK.

The friend declined to be named, but Murat Polat, an activist who also arrived at the scene, said: “We were horrified, everyone was in shock. There was a lot of fear. People thought they might be targeted too.”

The murders quickly became a rallying point for Europe’s ethnic Kurds, who number more than a million. The PKK is outlawed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. But for many Kurds, the group is a symbol of a stateless people, and Cansiz a hero.

In the hours after news of the murders emerged, thousands of people gathered near the Kurdish Information Centre on Rue Lafayette chanting, “We are all PKK,” as riot police stood by.

Visible on news footage of the gathering is Omer Guney, a Turkish immigrant to France who had joined the activists’ scene months before. Clean-shaven and wearing a hefty winter coat, he stood near the door to the apartment building that houses the center as France’s Interior Minister Manuel Valls described the murders as an “execution.”

Guney had driven Cansiz to the office on the morning of the killings. By January 21, the 30-year-old was the prime suspect in the case, after closed-circuit television footage showed he had also been at the premises later on the day of the murders.

Many Kurds suspect the killer or killers, whoever they were, were part of a Turkish plot to infiltrate the PKK and assassinate the activists. The PKK’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who is incarcerated on a Turkish island, recently agreed to a historic ceasefire with the Turkish state.

Mehmet Ulker, head of an umbrella organization of Kurdish groups in France, said he believes the murders were meant to intimidate the Kurds as talks over a possible ceasefire began. Muzaffer Ayata, 57, a founding member of the PKK who has lived in Germany since 2002, told Reuters there were signs shadowy elements within the Turkish state “committed this assassination to sabotage the peace process.”

Turkey has denied such allegations, suggesting instead that the murders were related to internal disputes in the PKK. It blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 40,000 people, mostly Kurdish, who have died since the militant group took up arms against the state in 1984.

Guney is being held in a Paris jail under formal investigation for “murder related to a terrorist enterprise” and “criminal conspiracy.” He denies he killed the women. His lawyer told Reuters that a medical condition made him incapable of committing such an elaborate crime. He had been treated for a tumor in his brain, his lawyer said, though activists who knew Guney say he showed no obvious impairment.

Many questions remain. If Guney was involved, was he set up? Were the three women killed by just one person? What was the motive?

“The investigators are walking on eggshells,” said Guney’s lawyer. “The diplomatic context is very sensitive; they are not taking any chances.”

A Reuters examination has found fresh information about Guney’s past and how he came to mix with the PKK despite it being unclear whether he had any Kurdish roots. A man who many in the Kurdish community call a maverick emerges as a complex character, a gun enthusiast with health problems who has had at least one brush with European police.

“ALWAYS ARMED”

Guney was born in the Turkish city of Sarkisla in the region of Sivas as the only son, along with four daughters, of a Turkish family. According to Guney’s state-appointed lawyer, Anne-Sophie Laguens, his family immigrated to France in the mid-1990s and installed themselves in the outer Paris suburb of Garges-les-Gonesse.

Neighbors confirmed that in 2005, Guney’s parents opened a kebab restaurant in the nearby suburb of St. Denis. A nearby barber said he knew Guney’s father and described his family as “nice people who never spoke about politics.”

Little is known about Guney’s early life in France except that he received a high school-level diploma as a mechanic from a French lycee. Laguens said that at some point Guney moved to a town on the outskirts of Munich, Germany, to live with his wife, a Turkish woman he had met in France and married in 2003.

There, Guney held a job for several years at a medium-sized firm called Kinshofer, which makes cranes and forklifts.

A colleague who worked with Guney between 2009 and 2011 described him as a “fairly neutral guy” who always appeared well-dressed in suits or jeans and suit jackets, and had a keen interest in weapons. Guney owned an air pistol that he took with him to work and had the image of a Kalashnikov rifle as the background screen of his telephone, the colleague said.

“Once an Albanian told me to be careful, ‘Guney is someone who is always armed’,” he said.

At Kinshofer, staffed by many Turks from Guney’s home region of Sivas, some Turkish workers harassed Kurdish employees, the colleague said. Guney did not join in; instead, he took an interest in Kurdish issues, telling the colleague that he had a Kurdish grandmother. It was not possible to verify that claim.

The work colleague said Guney expressed an interest in meeting other Kurds. “He always said to me, ‘tell me who you are meeting, who are your contacts, take me with you, you can trust me … I have good friends who will make sure nothing happens’.”

At one stage Guney said he had a tumor in his head and took several months off work. When he returned, he told the colleague that he was fine, but that his marriage was deteriorating.

“He told me, ‘I have nobody’,” the colleague said.

In 2011, Guney divorced his wife and began to make frequent trips to France, his lawyer said. During one of these trips he joined a Kurdish association in Villiers-le-Bel, a town not far from his parents’ home. The director of the association, the Kurdish Cultural House, recalled signing Guney’s membership application form but found him unremarkable.

“Our group is open to anyone of any background, including Turks, so there was no reason for me to be suspicious of Guney,” said Mehmet Subasi. “At that level of the organization, there is no screening.”

Local activists said it was not unusual for left-wing Turks to join their movement, which may offer a haven to those feeling marginalized in European society.

Guney began to spend more time at the association, offering to help with errands. He gave different versions of his background to different members, telling one that his father was Kurdish and another that he merely assumed a Kurdish identity to obtain political asylum in France, two activists who knew Guney said.

Ulker, the head of the Kurdish umbrella group in France, said that Guney’s story seemed to change depending on the background of the person he was addressing. “When he spoke to an Alevi, he would say ‘I am an Alevi, too’,” Ulker said, referring to a Muslim sect in Turkey. “When he spoke to a Sunni, he would say ‘I am also a Sunni (Muslim)’. And when someone exposed him he would say, ‘Ah, I was only joking’.”

In August 2012, Guney returned to his home in Germany and said he had to move out of his rented room immediately, according to his former landlady. Neighbors friendly with Guney’s parents said this move coincided with the death of his grandmother.

According to his lawyer, Guney traveled to Ankara, Turkey’s capital, several times in 2012, flying on low-cost airlines.

Meral Danis Bestas, a leader of the Kurdish BDP Party in Turkey who traveled to Paris and spoke to investigators, said on Friday that it was “very strange” no information about why Guney traveled to Ankara was forthcoming from French police. A French judicial source said investigators were still verifying the trips and were exchanging information with Turkey.

Guney’s lawyer told Reuters: “The trips were to find a perfect wife.”

MENTAL HEALTH

After returning to Paris, Guney moved back in with his parents and briefly worked as a maintenance officer at the Charles de Gaulle airport. The stint was cut short when Guney suffered a seizure on the job and was taken for treatment at the Saint-Anne Hospital in Paris, a specialist center for neurology and psychiatry, his lawyer said.

She said Guney was diagnosed with a brain tumor which caused frequent bouts of amnesia and provoked seizures. An uncle of Guney’s from Sivas interviewed on Turkey’s CNN affiliate said that he was “unable to remember what he ate an hour ago.” After his release from hospital, Guney received 700 to 800 euros per month in French disability payments.

“He suffers from very serious neurological difficulties,” Laguens said.

During this period of unemployment in early 2012, activists said, Guney started to appear at the Kurdish Cultural Centre in central Paris. The large facility houses several Kurdish associations, and is a short walk from the Kurdish Information Centre, which is known as an office for PKK activists. Nobody recalls having met Guney before he turned up.

“We realized later that nobody really knew him. He hung around the Centre, he smiled, he talked to people in Turkish, but nobody knew his family or friends,” said Polat, the activist who attended the scene of the murders soon after they were discovered.

In photographs from an outing with activists in March 2012, Guney is seen on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower hoisting a banner hailing Ocalan, the jailed leader of the PKK.

Berivan Akyol, a translator for the Kurdish community, said that despite his neurological problems Guney was capable of showing up on time for appointments, was able to drive and never complained of headaches or lost his balance.

Thanks to his fluent French, Guney was often called upon to translate for Kurdish women who wanted to communicate with their doctors, activists said. He also occasionally worked as a driver.

Last December, Guney accompanied a group of Kurdish activists on a trip to the Netherlands for a rally in the southwestern town of Ellemeet attended by PKK officials in Europe. The rally was broken up by 150 Dutch police, who arrested 55 people. Among them were Guney and Saylemez, the 25-year-old activist later shot in Paris (whose name in some reports has been spelled Soylemez). Guney was released the same day without charge.

That month, Guney moved into a flat in a high-rise building in the Paris suburb of La Courneuve, with a Turk of Kurdish origin whom he had met at the Villiers-le-Bel association. In an interview with Firat, a news agency linked to the PKK, the flatmate said that Guney owned five mobile phones which he refused to lend, and had shown him a gun. The flatmate, who was taken in for questioning by police along with Guney on January 17, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Subasi of the Kurdish association in Villiers-le-Bel said that after the murders he had questioned the flatmate, who had told him the gun shown to him by Guney had looked real. Guney’s lawyer said the gun was merely an air pistol and explained his interest in weapons as a cultural proclivity of Turkish men.

THE VICTIMS

On January 8, the day before the murders, Sakine Cansiz went to renew her French residency visa in Paris, said Akyol, the Kurdish translator. To Cansiz’s outrage, police refused to issue the visa that day, saying it was not ready, according to Akyol, who spoke to Cansiz about the process. The police declined to comment.

“I told her, ‘Calm down, this is France, there is no point in getting excited’,” Akyol said. “She could not hide her militant side, that was part of her personality.”

Cansiz’s temperament formed part of her legend among PKK supporters and Kurdish activists. Known by her code name “Sara” in the PKK, she had joined Ocalan’s movement as a student in the early 1970s before becoming a fighter. The PKK originally sought an independent Kurdish state, but has moderated its demands to seeking political autonomy and cultural rights.

Arrested by Turkish forces in the early 1980s, Cansiz spent a decade in the infamous Diyarbakir prison in eastern Turkey, where she said she was tortured. The experience forged a mindset based on unwavering personal discipline, said Ulker and other Kurdish activists.

Turkish sources said Cansiz had her differences with the organization’s elite. She had fled to Europe in the 1990s and followed a nomadic lifestyle, travelling between Paris, Brussels and Cologne, Germany, cities with large Kurdish exile populations.

Though Kurdish activists said she had come to deal mainly with women’s issues in the PKK, Cansiz almost certainly retained a wider political role.

According to a 2007 diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks, U.S. officials saw her as a key figure in the flow of funds sent from Europe to PKK leaders in Iraq – a role that has prompted speculation the killings’ motivation may have been robbery, not politics. Ayata, the founding member of the PKK who lives in Germany, said Cansiz had nothing to do with financing the group.

On January 9 Cansiz was planning to travel to Cologne and then on to attend conferences in Qandil, a district in the mountainous borderlands of northern Iraq where the PKK operates permanent bases, said a PKK official. Some Kurds believe Cansiz opposed the ceasefire talks. Ulker disagrees.

“There are disagreements in the PKK, like any organization, but Cansiz was not a renegade,” he said. “The reason for this killing, whoever was behind it, was to intimidate and provoke the Kurds as the (ceasefire) talks began, to cow them into weakness.”

Saylemez, who was killed alongside Cansiz, was an area manager in the PKK youth organization, and had planned to accompany her better-known comrade to Germany. “She was due to come to Germany the day she died,” her sister Yasmin told Reuters. “We never expected something like this could happen in Europe. Never.”

The other woman at the center was Dogan, who acted as an informal spokeswoman for Kurdish issues in France. The role had led her to meet journalists and officials, including President Francois Hollande.

The three were bright, fit and experienced. At 55, the combat-trained Cansiz continued to rise early each morning to go on an hour-long run or exercise in her room, according to Akyol.

Could one man with a mental impairment shoot all three with clinical accuracy?

10 BULLETS

Prosecutor Francois Mollins said the main piece of evidence linking Guney to the killings is closed-circuit TV footage showing him entering the Kurdish Information Centre building with Cansiz around 9 a.m. on January 9. Guney told interrogators he left the building for good at 11.30 a.m.

But cameras across the street recorded him entering with a shoulder bag shortly after noon and emerging, alone, at 12:56 p.m. Guney later said he could no longer recall exactly what time he had left the building but he maintained the women were alive when he did, according to his lawyer.

Forensic specialists found no signs of a struggle inside the office. There were four empty glasses in the kitchen sink, Ulker and other Kurdish sources assisting the police said. It appeared the three victims knew their killer and had been caught by surprise, police sources said.

Dogan had her coat on as though she had been about to leave the office, a converted apartment, said Polat, the Kurdish activist who attended the scene, and Cansiz was bleeding from several head wounds. She and Saylemez both had blackened, swollen eyes, said Ulker, who saw the corpses at the morgue. Aside from the bodies on the floor and a packed suitcase lying open next to the coffee table, the room was neat and undisturbed.

Autopsies showed the women were killed by bullets fired into their heads at close range, three each for Dogan and Saylemez, and four for Cansiz. Ballistics experts found two brands of 7.65mm caliber bullets at the site. Molins said the bullets had “most likely” been fired from a single gun. The attack “looked like the work of a professional,” a judicial source told France’s TF1 television.

Traces of gunpowder were found on a bag in Guney’s car. Guney cannot explain the traces because the reason for them being there “is too uncertain,” said his lawyer. Partial DNA traces recovered on a bullet casing from the murder scene were inconclusive and no gun has been recovered, the prosecutor said.

Some Kurdish activists at the Information Centre suggest others might have gained access to the building via an entrance leading into its hallway from an adjacent grocery store, which was closed and shuttered that day.

In the aftermath of the shootings, Guney stayed in and around Paris. As well as being caught on CCTV in the crowd outside the center, he also attended a rally in memory of the victims on the outskirts of Paris a few days later.

Activists asked Guney to help police with their investigation because he had been Cansiz’s driver on the day of the women’s murder, said Polat. Guney went to police for an initial round of questioning on January 16 and was asked to return the following day.

Anti-terrorism investigators questioned Guney and his flatmate for about 96 hours, the maximum period allowed in terrorism cases in France. The flatmate was released while Guney stayed in custody. On January 21 a prosecutor told journalists that Guney was “probably the author or one of the authors of these acts”.

MISSING MOTIVE

Under French law Guney could remain in jail for up to a year, with possible extension to a maximum of four years, subject to review by judges overseeing the case.

French judicial sources declined to comment on their theories for a possible motive. Though police sources at first touted several suggestions, ranging from a love spat gone wrong to internal PKK score-settling to a temporary bout of insanity, they have since stayed silent.

Guney has claimed to be the victim of a Franco-Turkish plot, according to Ulker’s conversations with police, and told police that surveillance footage had been tampered with to remove images of other men, according to Ulker. Guney’s lawyer denied he mentioned a plot during questioning.

French and Kurdish media reported that Guney told police he was a member of the PKK, potentially fuelling suspicions that the killings were related to tensions within the organization. But the PKK leadership denies Guney was a member, and Guney’s lawyer said that he did not claim to be a fully fledged member of the organization.

PKK sources prefer to point the finger at Turkey. They said warnings by Turkish government officials days after the shootings that PKK officials were unsafe hinted at state involvement in the murders. Roj Welat, a senior PKK fighter based in northern Iraq, described the killings as a “political massacre” and “an international conspiracy.”

Turkish officials reject such allegations.

After decades of conflict, the decision by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to talk openly with PKK leader Ocalan is fraught with political risk. Erdogan has to carry with him a skeptical conservative establishment; Ocalan has to keep the obedience of fighters in the remote mountains of Qandil, some harboring doubts about the process.

The Paris shootings had an almost immediate political impact. After news of the deaths, Ocalan suspended talks with Turkey for five or six weeks and demanded that the killer be identified, according to Ulker who has talked with people in the Kurdish BDP party who visited Ocalan.

In late March Turkey and the PKK finally signed a ceasefire agreement. At the same time a wider peace process continues and the deaths of the three activists remain a sensitive issue.

Yesterday, Selahattin Demirtas, a co-leader of the Kurdish BDP party, told Reuters: “It was a deliberate murder and assassination. As long as it remains unsolved, as to who was behind this, then the peace process is in danger. That is why it is important to find out who was behind the murders.”

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul, and Chine Labbe and Nicolas Bertin in Paris; Editing By Richard Woods and Simon Robinson)

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government is seeking a weapons-free pullout by militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as part of a drive to end a three-decades long conflict which has killed more than 40,000 people.

The militants themselves however have expressed concern that they could be vulnerable to attack. Hundreds were killed in clashes with security forces in a previous withdrawal in 1999.

“Prime Minister Erdogan says disarmament must occur but even he knows that is technically impossible. He says, ‘Leave the weapons in a cave or bury them, do whatever you want,’ but who will regulate this?,” Selahattin Demirtas, co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), told Reuters in an interview during a visit to Berlin.

“So we shouldn’t get too hung up on this issue, and it appears that the government won’t turn this into a crisis.”

So far, the issue of disarmament has been the sticking point in the peace process. The PKK has said its forces will not withdraw as Erdogan has demanded.

The rebels declared a ceasefire with Turkey last month, in response to an order from their jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan, after months of talks with Ankara. The next step is a pullout of an estimated 2,000-2,500 fighters from Turkish territory to bases in the mountains of northern Iraq.

Demirtas said hopes for the peace process remained strong despite some hitches. He has been part of a BDP delegation visiting Ocalan, imprisoned on an island near Istanbul.

Only Ocalan and a few Turkish officials have direct knowledge of the peace plan, communicating through letters.

Demirtas said two BDP lawmakers had collected a new letter from Ocalan on Sunday, which was now with the Turkish Justice Ministry. That letter, which includes the details of the withdrawal, would also go to PKK leaders in northern Iraq, who would then write an answer to Ocalan and the Ankara government.

Ocalan could then make an announcement in the next week to 10 days, he said.

“If this begins in 10 days, then I think that by autumn we will see most of the withdrawal complete,” he added.

Questions of disarmament and reintegration of combatants have tested peace efforts from Northern Ireland to South Africa, often proving extremely difficult to solve due to the amount of distrust on both sides.

Foreign mediators could be brought in to oversee disarmament and reintegration, as happened in Northern Ireland in the run-up to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which ended three decades of violence that cost 3,600 lives.

OCALAN “IN GOOD HEALTH”

Demirtas, 40, said he had found Ocalan to be in good health, energetic and keen to move forward with the peace plan.

The PKK, branded a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union, launched its insurgency with the aim of carving out an independent state in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey, but later modified its goal to political autonomy.

Pro-Kurdish politicians are focused on expanding minority rights and winning stronger local government for the Kurds, who make up about 20 percent of Turkey’s 75 million people.

The war has drained state coffers, stunted development of the southeast and scarred Turkey’s human rights record.

Demirtas said the peace plan comprised three stages, first a withdrawal, then legislative changes and a third stage that would include political talks and “normalization”.

“The second phase is critical for the settlement. During that time the government must take certain steps for democracy in Turkey and the rights of Kurds. In particular the legal articles in the constitution which deny the Kurds’ (existence) must change,” he said.

The government has pledged to draw up a new constitution to replace a charter drawn up 30 years ago under military rule. But a parliamentary commission working on the draft has been unable to agree on many of the key issues, delaying the process by months. The BDP’s support could break the deadlock.

Asked about the constitution, Demirtas said the BDP had four key demands. It must not define all citizens as “Turks” as at present, it must grant citizens the right to education in their mother tongue, recognize Turkey’s diversity and include a right to some form of communal self-administration.

Demirtas urged Ankara to expand democratic rights and freedom of expression and to boost financial support for opposition parties. He also urged the government to limit the scope of anti-terror laws, often used to incarcerate Kurdish politicians and close down Kurdish political parties.

“Police and authorities’ treatment of demonstrators needs to be overhauled … We need measures to free the politicians and mayors who are incarcerated and political prisoners,” he said.

Thousands of Kurdish activists, including dozens of elected officials, are held in prison on charges of backing the PKK.

The BDP hopes once regional tensions ease, the southeast can finally enjoy the economic boom seen elsewhere in Turkey.

(Additional reporting by Istanbul, Ankara bureaux; Writing by Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Jon Hemming)