ANKARA, April 19 (AFP)  Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said Friday that a drive by Kurdish rebels to reorganize within a peaceful and democratic organization was a sham to cover up their separatist ambitions.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a 15-year war for self-rule in southeast Turkey, said Tuesday it was reorganizing itself under the name of Congress for Freedom and Democracy in Kurdistan (KADEK) as part of a new strategy to campaign for Kurdish freedoms through democratic means.

"The change of name is a deception, because the PKK has not actually given up its separatist ambitions," Ecevit told reporters here.

He stressed the PKK move was aimed at misleading the European Union, which has long put pressure on Turkey, a struggling membership candidate, to grant its Kurdish minority cultural freedoms.

"Our European friends, I hope, are also aware" that the PKK maintains its separatist goals, Ecevit said.

Ecevit's deputy, Mesut Yilmaz, recently said the Union was considering including the PKK on a list of terrorist organizations along with a far-left radical Turkish group.

The PKK's reform bid came as a follow-up of its 1999 decision to lay down arms to seek a democratic solution to the Kurdish conflict, which has claimed some 36,500 lives since 1984.

Since then heavy fighting in the mainly Kurdish southeast has declined, but Turkey played down that peace bid too as a ploy and the army continues to hunt down the rebels.

The PKK is outlawed in Britain, France and Germany, but the EU has not so far included the group on its list of terrorist organizations, prompting harsh criticism from Ankara.

Along with Ankara, Washington has also branded the PKK a "terrorist" organization.