ANKARA, Oct 24 (AFP) - 11h39 - Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, in an interview published here Monday, suggested a "general amnesty" by Ankara for Turkey's Kurdish PKK rebels to end fighting in southwest Turkey.

"It is possible to bring down the PKK from the mountains if there is a general amnesty in Turkey," Talabani, himself a Kurd, told English-language daily The New Anatolian.

"It will also be helpful if there is some kind of cooperation between Turkey, the Iraqi government, the PUK and the KDP over the issue," he said.

Talabani was referring to the two main Kurdish factions that share power in Northern Iraq, his own Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Massud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party.

"It will be impossible to solve the issue by using force," Talabani said, adding: "The Iraqi army is not yet able to do this.

"If we push the PKK too far, perhaps they will start cooperating with terrorists in Iraq like Al-Qaeda, Ansar El-Islam and (Abu Musab al-) Zarqawi and will bring more trouble to all of us," he said.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned last week that Turkey was running out of patience with the PKK, which uses bases in Northern Iraq to attack targets on Turkish territory.

He called on the United States and Iraq to take action against the PKK, or Kurdistan Worker's Party, which has waged an on-and-off war against security forces in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast that has claimed 37,000 lives since 1984.

Ankara has threatened several times to launch military incursions into Northern Iraq to dislodge PKK militants holed up there since 1989.

The PKK, considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, has increased its attacks since last spring, one year after ending a five-year unilateral truce it proclaimed after the arrest of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

Turkey has announced several partial amnesties in the past for PKK militants in a bid to end the fighting, but has always excluded the movement's leadership.