WORLD IN BRIEF : TURKEY : Cabinet OKs Use of Kurdish Language

The government has approved legislation that would allow public use of the Kurdish language in conversation and songs for the first time in eight years, officials in Ankara, Turkey, announced. A government spokesman told reporters after a late-night Cabinet session that the legislation, lifting a ban on all use of Kurdish imposed by the military in 1983, would be sent to the Parliament in the coming days. Under the bill, Kurdish would remain banned in education, political propaganda, publishing and broadcasting. The government announced last week that it intended to ease the ban, a move interpreted as a first step toward recognizing the ethnic rights of Turkey’s restive Kurdish minority.