The proposal by Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat, ex-deputy chairman of the Justice and Development Party and himself a Kurd, has been previously reported in the media as a possible measure the government might consider, but it was the first time that an official openly suggested the formula.

The proposal came amid an intensified debate in Turkey on how the Kurdish conflict should be resolved after the government announced it was preparing fresh reforms to win over the Kurds.

Firat told the Milliyet daily that Ankara's list of senior members of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) included about 200 people based in neighbouring northern Iraq, suggesting that "a deal could be hammered out to send them to a country other than Turkey."

Media reports have mentioned Scandinavian countries as a possible place of exile.

The remaining PKK militants "could be accepted to Turkey without any (legal) action against them... and this could become a sort of an amnesty process," Firat said.

Ankara says about 2,000 PKK rebels, among them the group's commanders, are holed up in mountainous bases in northern Iraq, which they use as launching pad for attacks on Turkish targets across the border.

PKK founder and leader Abdullah Ocalan is already jailed, serving a life sentence at a prison island in northwestern Turkey since 1999.

Eager to boost its bid to join the European Union, Ankara has in recent years granted the Kurds a series of cultural freedoms, but failed to draw up a clear strategy to cajole the PKK into laying down arms.

The group, listed as a terrorist organisation by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives.

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

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