"Young people should know their place is in the mountains, in the field of action... They should be at the forefront, with the defence forces," said Nurettin Sofi, a senior member of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), quoted by the Firat news agency.

Sufi said the rebels would heed peace proposals that jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan is expected to announce and welcomed an intensified debate in Turkey on how the conflict should be peacefully resolved.

He warned, however, that "we should take precautions not to fall in a trap," Firat reported.

Ocalan, serving a life sentence since 1999, was expected to announce "a roadmap for a democratic solution" Saturday, the 25th anniversary of the first PKK attack.

But his lawyers, who visited him in prison Friday, said Ocalan had not yet completed the proposals, postponing the announcement to a yet unknown date.

Ocalan's expected proposals coincide with a fresh government drive to win over the Kurdish community and erode popular support for the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community.

The government has said it is preparing a package of measures to expand Kurdish freedoms, but has remained tight-lipped on the content, while struggling to win the support of civic groups and a hostile opposition.

Last month, the PKK said it had extended a unilateral truce by six weeks until September 1 in anticipation of Ocalan's proposals.

Ankara rejects dialogue with the PKK and has so far dismissed calls for a general amnesty to encourage the militants to lay down arms.

Eager to boost its EU bid, Turkey in recent years granted the Kurds a series of cultural freedoms, but failed to draw up a clear strategy to bring down the rebels from their mountainous bases in Turkey and neighbouring northern Iraq.

The PKK's armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast began on August 15, 1984 with an attack on army facilities in Eruh, Siirt province, in which one soldier was killed.

The conflict, which saw its bloodiest period in the 1990s, has claimed about 45,000 lives and led to human rights violations on both sides, causing mass migration from rural to urban areas and badly damaging the already meagre economy of the impoverished southeast.