Ankara - Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has called on Turkey to announce an amnesty for Kurdish separatists, saying this was the best way to end three decades of fighting in south-east Turkey.

In an interview published in Sabah newspaper Wednesday, Talabani said he believed the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) was ready to lay down its arms and hand its weapons over to US forces in northern Iraq if a general amnesty was announced.

"My message to the PKK is to end the violence, to end the armed conflict," Talabani said, noting that this was the same message that Turkey was giving to the Palestinian Hamas group.

Talabani, in Istanbul for an international conference, said that he would make the call for the PKK to end its armed struggle at a conference next month in the northern Iraq city of Arbil at which all major Kurdish groups in the region will be attending.

The Turkish military suspects there are as many as 5,000 PKK fighters holed up in northern Iraq bases from which they launch operations into Turkey.

Ankara blames the separatist group for the deaths of more than 32,000 people since the early 1980s when the PKK began its fight for independence or autonomy for the mainly Kurdish-populated south-east of Turkey.

The PKK is considered by the United States and the European Union to be a terrorist group. (dpa)