Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay was hosting the meeting, with Iraq represented by National Security Minister Shirwan al-Waeli and the United States by Brigadier General Steven Hummer, who is based in Iraq, officials said.

The meeting was convened as part of a joint committee set up in November to enact measures to curb the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community.

PKK militants have long taken refuge in northern Iraq, using the mountainous region as a springboard for attacks inside Turkey.

The PKK took up arms for self-rule in Kurdish-majority southeast Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that claimed about 45,000 lives.

Last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government was working on fresh ouvertures to the Kurdish community in a bid to encourage PKK rebels to lay down arms.

Some analysts say the measures could be announced shortly to pre-empt a "roadmap for a democratic solution" that jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan is expected to propose in August.

Earlier this month, the PKK said it was extending a unilateral truce by six weeks until September 1 in anticipation of Ocalan's proposals.

Eager to boost its bid to join the European Union, Ankara has in recent years expanded Kurdish cultural freedoms, including the inauguration of a Kurdish-language public television channel in January.

But the government has failed to draw up a clear strategy to convince the PKK to lay down arms, ruling out dialogue with the rebels and rejecting calls to grant them amnesty.

Aided by US intelligence, Turkey has bombed PKK camps in northern Iraq since December 2007 under a parliamentary authorisation that expires in October.

Ankara had often accused the Iraqi Kurds, who run an autonomous administration in northern Iraq, of tolerating and even aiding the rebels.

But in a major policy shift last year, it said it would seek to resolve the issue through diplomacy and cooperation with Baghdad and the Iraqi Kurds.