ANKARA, Nov 9 (AFP) - 16h02 - Leading Kurdish activists set up a new political party in Turkey on Wednesday, pledging to work to resolve the Kurdish conflict through peaceful means.

"We will work for peace," Aysel Tugluk, the co-chairwoman of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), told AFP shortly before she sumbitted to the Interior Ministry the documents announcing the party's formation.

Tugluk is one of the lawyers of jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, accused by the government of acting as intermediaries between their client and his militants in the mountains.

Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party, the Democratic People's Party (DEHAP), is under the threat of closure in a pending court case on charges of links to Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), blacklisted as a terrorist group by Ankara as well as the European Union and the United States.

DEHAP has said it will dissolve itself and merge with the new party.

The DTP was spearheaded by four former Kurdish parliament members, including human rights award winner Leyla Zana, who were released last year after a decade in jail for collaborating with the PKK in its armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast.

"The DTP places importance on resolving the Kurdish conflict through dialogue," Tugluk was quoted as saying by Anatolia news agency. "We believe this problem could be resolved with the institutions and rules of democracy."

Kurdish politicians in Turkey are traditionally regarded with suspicion and often seen as instruments of the PKK.

Some activists have recently called for a new political movement that will shrug off Ocalan's influence, known to be notable among Kurdish activists, in order to win Ankara's confidence and wage a more efficient struggle for Kurdish rights.

Officials from the EU, which has long advocated the rights of the Kurdish minority, have also urged Kurdish politicians to dissociate themselves from violence.

Some 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the PKK launched a bloody separatist campaign, prompting a heavy-handed response by the Turkish army.

Keen to boost its EU membership bid, Ankara has recently granted the Kurds a measure of cultural freedoms.