General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with the Turkish army chief, General Isik Kosaner, at the Turkish general staff headquarters, an army statement said without elaborating.

A US embassy statement said Cartwright's agenda included "issues related to regional security and ways to further improve US support for Turkey's fight with the PKK terrorist organization."

It was referring to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an outlawed armed group that has waged a bloody 26-year separatist war in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast.

The United States has been supplying Turkey, a NATO ally, with intelligence on PKK movements in neighbouring northern Iraq, where the rebels take refuge, for use particularly in Turkish air raids on PKK hideouts in the region.

The talks followed renewed clashes between the Turkish army and the PKK, with 12 rebels killed last week at the Iraqi border while trying to cross into Turkey.

Both Ankara and Washington list the PKK as a terrorist organisation.

Cartwright was also scheduled to visit a NATO base in the western Turkish city of Izmir, which is involved in the alliance's current operations in Libya, according to the embassy statement.