The chief of general staff, General Yasar Buyukanit, said he favored an incursion into northern Iraq to clean up Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) bases there, but said the order to do so must come from the government.

"The political authorities must determine whether, once we go in (to northern Iraq), we act only against the PKK or if something will happen with Barzani as well," he said, referring to Massud Barzani, who heads the Kurdish autonomous region's government.

He was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an international military symposium at the War Academy here.

Barzani, who is also the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, has always strongly opposed any Turkish military action against northern Iraq.

But vocal support for a Turkish incursion there has been growing since PKK activities in the southerast increased with the spring thaw and a suicide bomb attack in Ankara, blamed on the PKK, killed six and wounded 121 last week in Ankara.

"I already told Turkey and the world (at a press conference) on April 12 that we need this," Buyukanit said, referring to an eventual crossborder operation.

"As military men, we are ready, but all military men need orders," he said before adding, in an apparent swipe at the government: "I can't send them a written request, can I? What do they expect from me?"

On May 23, the day after the bomb attack in Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government would support the army if it sought to strike at PKK bases in northern Iraq.

But Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, who is also the deputy prime minister, said two days later that Turkey had no immediate plans for such action.

Turkey says thousands of PKK rebels enjoy safe haven in Northern Iraq, where they obtain weapons and explosives for attacks against Turkish targets in the secessionist war they launched in the Kurdish majority southeast in 1984, at a cost of more than 37,000 lives so far.

The army strenghtened its presence and launched clean-up operations in several eastern and southeastern Turkish provinces as PKK activities increased in recent weeks, as they do every spring.

In the latest of series of almost daily clashes, four PKK militants were killed Thursday in a gunbattle with the army in the east and southeast of the country.