ANKARA, April 18 (AFP)  Turkey urged its neighbor Bulgaria to crack down on a Kurdish group in the country, suspected of aiding armed Kurdish rebels, as the two nations signed deals to enhance bilateral security cooperation.
Speaking after talks here with his Bulgarian counterpart Georgi Petkanov, Turkish Interior Minister Rustu Kazim Yucelen said he had handed him over information about alleged illegal activities by a Kurdish cultural center in Bulgaria, Anatolia news agency reported.

"We gave our freinds information about money being transferred to the terrorist organization, which is being collected either through extortion or through legal means" by the cultural center, Yucelen said.

"Its activities, I hope, will be reviewed in light with this information," he added.

The "terrorist organization" Yucelen was referring to was the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a 15-year armed struggle for self-rule in southeast Turkey.

Petkanov pledged to assess the information given by Turkey and to take legal action against the group if the accusations were proven.

He stressed, however, that Bulgarian authorities had not detected so far any illegal acts by the center, which, he said, was carrying out cultural activities for a Kurdish community of about 1,000 people in Bulgaria.

The two ministers were speaking after signing a cooperation accord on coast security and a memorandum envisaging accelerated joint efforts against human- and drug-smuggling as well as other types of organized crime.

Turkey and Bulgaria lie on a major trafficking route from Asia to Europe.