"Keeping up this process is no longer meaningful and useful. I am quitting after May 31 since I could not find an interlocutor," the website of Kurdish paper Ozgur Politika quoted Ocalan as saying.

He reportedly made the comments at a recent meeting with his lawyers on the prison island of Imrali.

The head of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), jailed for life in 1999, said the "responsibility now rests" with senior PKK commanders and the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), Turkey's main Kurdish political movement.

"I cannot manage from here. They will decide what to do," he said. "I hope innocent civilian people will not be harmed."

Ocalan said his decision did not amount to a call on the PKK to intensify its armed campaign.

"This should not be misunderstood. This is not a call for a war," he was quoted as saying.

Although behind bars, Ocalan has retained his influence over the PKK, often issuing guidelines to the rebels in statements released through his lawyers.

His calls for dialogue have been rejected by the government, which insists the PKK should either lay down arms or face the army.

"From now on, the PKK may reconcile with the state or may reach a solution... or the PKK may be defeated and abolished... Nobody knows what happens in a war," Ocalan said, according to Ozgur Politika.

He reiterated that "democratic autonomy" for the sizeable Kurdish community should be the solution to the conflict.

Following a usual winter lull, violence erupted anew in the southeast with the arrival of spring when the snow melts, allowing the rebels to move out from their mountainous hideouts in Turkey and neighbouring Iraq.

Three members of the security forces were killed in clashes Saturday.

Last year, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government announced it would expand Kurdish freedoms in a bid to peacefully end the conflict.

The initiative however has faltered amid a string of unsettling events, including the banning of BDP's predecessor in December and bloody PKK attacks that have led to public outrage at the government.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community, took up arms in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed some 45,000 lives.