Kurdish chief urges end to Turkey revolt

Jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan yesterday called for Kurds to hold a historic congress to end a decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish authorities that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

In an eagerly-anticipated message for the traditional Kurdish New Year, Ocalan however stopped short of setting out a clear road map for disarmament of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels as had been anticipated in some quarters.

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In the message read out by a pro-Kurdish lawmaker to hundreds of thousands of supporters in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, Ocalan said that the armed struggle had been "painful" and could no longer be maintained.

He said the congress -- which would likely involve all the Kurdish political forces in Turkey -- would decide "a social and political strategy which will determine our history".

Ocalan is serving a life sentence on the prison island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara following his sensational arrest by Turkish agents in Kenya in 1999.

The Turkish government welcomed the message.

At least 40,000 people have been killed on both sides since the PKK formally began its insurgency in 1984 demanding self-rule for Turkey's Kurds who make up around 20 percent of the population. Bloodshed though had begun at least a decade before that.