DHAKA: The jailed leader of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) on Saturday made a ‘historic’ call to the separatists to hold a disarmament conference, a key step in efforts to end Turkey’s 30-year Kurdish insurgency.

‘As we are ushering the 30 years of conflict towards permanent peace, it is our primary goal to reach a democratic solution,’ Abdullah Ocalan said in a message relayed by Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) lawmaker Sirri Sureyya Onder, reports The Straits Times.

‘I’m calling on the PKK to hold an extraordinary congress in spring to make a strategic and historic decision on disarmament,’ Onder quoted Ocalan as saying in a joint press conference with deputy prime minister Yalcin Akdogan.

‘This is a historic call to replace armed struggle with democratic politics.’

BDST: 1829 HRS, FEB 28, 2015