His comments follow indications that the European Union could include the PKK on its list of "terrorist" groups.

The PKK launched an armed campaign for a Kurdish homeland in southeastern Turkey in 1984 and more than 30,000 people have died in the fighting.

But violence has tapered off since PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured in 1999 and sentenced to death for treason.

After his arrest Abdullah Ocalan ordered his followers to withdraw from Turkey and seek greater cultural rights for its estimated 12 million Kurds through political means.

The move is seen by Turkish authorities as a ruse for Ocalan to avoid the noose and Ankara has vowed to track down and eliminate the PKK.

"With the decision taken at the PKK congress, all of the PKK's activities have ended," Osman Ocalan, a senior PKK member, said on satellite television channel Medya TV, which acts as a mouthpiece for the rebels.

"After this, activities will be carried out under the roof of the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Party," Ocalan said, speaking live by telephone from northern Iraq -- where the PKK has been holding a congress -- in a rare interview.

Turkey has accused some European countries of providing PKK members with a safe haven and has pressed the EU to include the rebels on their terrorist list.

Sources close to the guerrillas, most of whom have fled to northern Iraq, previously said the PKK had launched a new political party, the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party, that would seek a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish question.

The U.S. State Department, which includes the PKK on its list of terrorist organisations, has said a name change would not affect the group's status.

"The European Union's putting the PKK on the terrorism list is a grave mistake," Osman Ocalan said, speaking in Turkish.

"Putting the PKK on this list would portray the Kurdish people as terrorists...and means the leaders of the Kurdish people are terrorists.

"The European Union should certainly not accept this pressure from Turkey," he said. "Putting the PKK on this list means war is wanted, not peace."

Europe-based Medya TV, which broadcasts in Kurdish and Turkish and is viewed by many people in the mainly-Kurdish southeast of Turkey, broke into its programming to show the interview.