Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan chaired the meeting, attended by his ministers of the interior, defence and foreign affairs as well as the chief of general staff, the land forces commander, the police chief and the head of the intelligence agency.

The six-hour meeting ended with a brief statement confirming that further discussions would be held Tuesday. No deatils of the measures were taken.

The government is under pressure for tougher action against the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) after 17 soldiers were killed last Friday when PKK militants crossing from camps in neighbouring Iraq assaulted a border outpost, backed by heavy weapons fire from the other side of the frontier.

It was followed Wednesday by an attack on a police bus in Diyarbakir, the main city of the Kurdish-majority southeast, which claimed five lives.

The bus came under machine-gun fire just as parliament in Ankara extended by one year the government's mandate to order cross-border military operations in northern Iraq against the PKK, which has long enjoyed safe haven in the region.

The opposition has also called for a tougher stance against the autonomous Kurdish administration of northern Iraq, which Ankara accuses of tolerating the PKK on its territory and even aiding the rebels.

The Turkish security forces have also requested several legal amendments to strengthen their hand in the struggle against the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community.

The army and the police have often complained that some reforms limiting their powers, passed in recent years as part of Turkey's efforts to align with European Union norms, have hampered efforts against crime.

The foreign ministry Thursday sought to allay concerns that the changes sought by the security forces would amount to backpedalling from EU democracy norms.

"The measures to be taken will make no concession neither on our security nor freedoms. There is nothing to worry about," ministry spokesman Burak Ozugergin told reporters.

The government is also under pressure to outline a new strategy of economic and social development for the southeast, Turkey's poorest region, to erode popular support for separatism.

The Turkish army has carried out a series of air raids and a week-long ground incursion against PKK camps in northern Iraq since the government obtained its first one-year mandate on October 17, 2007.

Turkish forces have killed 640 PKK militants this year, about 400 of them in cross-border operations in northern Iraq, according to army figures.

The PKK took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 44,000 lives.

Keen to boost its EU membership bid, Ankara has undertaken a series of reforms that boosted Kurdish cultural freedoms and relaxed stringent security arrangements in the southeast.

Kurdish activists however say a general amnesty is a must to encourage the PKK to lay down its arms, a proposal the government has coldly rejected.