ANKARA, 20 August 2005 — A Kurdish rebel group fighting for autonomy in Turkey’s southeast announced a unilateral, one-month cease-fire yesterday and said it planned to pursue indirect negotiations with Ankara. The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, said from Brussels that it was ordering its forces to hold fire between Aug. 20 and Sept. 20 - a dramatic step following a string of bombings at Aegean resorts claimed by militants and ambushes of Turkish troops in the southeast.

But the rebels added that they would defend themselves if attacked by Turkish forces. “The decision of a one-month cease-fire stands,” said Remzi Kartal, a member of the executive committee of KONGRA-GEL, PKK’s political wing, told The Associated Press in Brussels. “But we will switch from an active defense to a passive one.”

Kartal also said his group planned “to seek indirect contacts with Ankara to have a dialogue with the Turkish government” to resolve Turkey’s Kurdish dispute. The move comes a day after the country’s new pro-Kurdish political movement, Democratic Society Movement, urged the rebel group to declare a cease-fire, saying recent conciliatory remarks by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had raised hopes for an improvement in the battered region.

Turkish officials snubbed the PKK decision as analysts predicted no breakthrough in the conflict that continues to burden Ankara as it prepares for accession talks with the European Union. Government officials refused to comment on the move. “It is out of the question for us to comment on this issue,” Akif Beki, Erdogan’s spokesman, told AFP.

A senior Foreign Ministry official, who requested anonymity, said: “Those people are terrorists and it is not possible for us to qualify their actions either as positive or negative.” Ankara has meticulously avoided any move that could imply accepting the PKK as an interlocutor. “We will closely watch the developments in this one-month period. We will give time to Prime Minister Erdogan’s well-intended efforts,” KONGRA-GEL head Zubeyir Aydar told the pro-Kurdish MHA news agency.

During a recent visit to Diyarbakir, the largest city in the Kurdish-dominated southeast, Erdogan said his government had made mistakes in the region. He promised to bring investment in education, housing and health care to the southeast and to improve unemployment, which in some cities stands at more than 50 percent. Kartal said his group’s offer of a cease-fire was a response to Erdogan’s remarks and calls by Kurdish and Turkish intellectuals for a halt to violence. He said he hoped for a “peaceful and democratic solution. It is important we have a dialogue.”

Kartal said Belgian police prevented Aydar from announcing the cease-fire at a news conference in Brussels.