Kurdish rebels in Turkey call off a four-year truce

"We have made a new assessment of the situation and we are announcing that the unilateral ceasefire is ending as of Sept. 1."

Kurdistan Workers' Party statement

Turkey's main armed Kurdish rebel group Monday called off its four-year-old unilateral ceasefire, challenging Ankara to decide now "whether it is peace or war."

"At the present stage it has become impossible to keep up the process of a unilateral ceasefire," the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) said in a statement carried by the Germany-based pro-Kurdish MHA news agency.

"We have made a new assessment of the situation and we are announcing that the unilateral ceasefire is ending as of Sept. 1, and that the ceasefire can continue only as a bilateral one."

The rebel group -- now renamed KADEK -- declared the ceasefire in 1999 shortly after the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, with the aim of pursuing a political resolution to the conflict in the country's restive, mainly Kurdish southeast.

Its leadership said Ankara had failed to respond with a reciprocal show of goodwill to the ceasefire, declared after nearly two decades of conflict that claimed over 36,000 lives.

Despite the four-year ceasefire, however, separatists have continued sporadic attacks on Turkish targets in the southeast, while Ankara in turn has stepped up its drive to hunt down PKK gunmen, including those hiding in neighboring Iraq.

In its statement, the separatist leadership suggested that peace could be restored if Turkey ended its hunt for its rebels.

Ocalan, who is serving out a life sentence on an isolated island prison off western Turkey, told a newspaper he would not attempt to stop the rebels.

"The mission of peace I wanted to assume was left unanswered. That is why I cannot now tell KADEK to maintain the truce," the pro-Kurdish Ozgur Politika daily quoted him as saying.

Turkey has repeatedly rejected calls to negotiate a solution to the conflict.

It has urged its US ally to purge Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq of PKK militants, saying an estimated 5,000 of them use the autonomous region to stage attacks against its forces.

Ankara also recently offered an amnesty to PKK members who give information enabling the government to act against rebels hiding out in Iraq.

Meanwhile in the eastern city of Diyarbakir, thousands of Kurds streamed into the streets to demonstrate for greater cultural rights and freedom for their imprisoned kinsmen.

Around 4,000 protestors held high banners reading "Peace now!" and "Yes to a general amnesty" -- a call for an amnesty that extends to all Kurdish prisoners, not just informants.