The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has called on the Turkish government to engage in a direct dialogue with the outlawed group in a bid to end a 25-year hostility.

The widely-regarded terrorist organization said in a statement on Thursday that a political solution to the long Turkish-Kurdish conflict is inevitable. The statement also called for the release of its jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

Ocalan was captured by Turkish security agents in 1999 while he was heading to the airport from the Greek Embassy in Kenya. He was sentenced to death, but as Turkey subsequently abolished the death penalty, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He is currently held captive under maximum security measures at a detention facility on the island of Imrali, just off Istanbul in the Marmara Sea.

Turkey refuses to negotiate with the PKK or its imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan, though it has offered measures to reconcile with its Kurdish population.

More than 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died since the PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984. The war has cost the country an estimated $300 billion and fueled European opponents to Turkey's bid for EU membership.

PKK has been conducting terrorist operations against Turkey and Iran for much of the past three decades under the pretext of gaining 'Kurdish autonomy.'

Reconciliation efforts made by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey are the latest in his government's policy of trying to neutralize disputes with Kurds. Such attempts, however, have had mixed successes.

In mid-July, Erdogan's chief political adviser proposed opening Kurdish language departments in universities, giving Kurdish names back to villages and setting up a parliamentary commission to investigate the unsolved murders of Kurdish civilians at the height of the PKK's insurgency war.

Ankara, meanwhile, continues to rule out the possibility of a general amnesty for the estimated 4,000 PKK members, holed up in Iraq and southeastern Turkey.

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community, including Turkey, Iran, the US and European Union member states.

MP/MB