ANKARA (AFP) -- Turkey said on Wednesday it was ready for dialogue with Kurdish leaders in neighboring northern Iraq if they took measures against Turkish Kurd rebels holed up in the autonomous enclave.

"Naturally, we need to see positive signals in order to take steps for dialogue, and by positive signals, we mean serious steps against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party" (PKK), foreign ministry spokesman Levent Bilman was quoted by the Anatolia news agency as saying.

"Otherwise, there is no point in holding a dialogue just for the sake of it," he added.

The PKK, branded as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, has been fighting for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast since 1984 in a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.

Turkey charges that thousands of PKK rebels have found refuge in northern Iraq where they are able to obtain weapons and explosives for attacks across the border in Turkey.

Ankara accuses Iraqi Kurds of tolerating and even supporting the rebels.

Turkey has long been pressing the United States and Iraq to stamp out the PKK presence in the region and has even threatened to carry out a cross-border operation if they fail to do so.

The debate over a possible Turkish military operation into northern Iraq has intensified since a suicide bomb attack last month in Ankara, blamed on the PKK, killed six and wounded more than 100.

Turkish media have expressed increasing indignation as violence in the southeast and east of the country has climbed amid a large-scale army crackdown on the PKK, launched in April.

Late Tuesday, Turkish troops shot dead a PKK rebel in a clash during a security sweep in the southeastern Bitlis Province, governor Mevlut Akbas told the Anatolia news agency.

Turkey also suspects Iraqi Kurds of designs to break away from Baghdad and set up their independent state which, it fears, would embolden the PKK and fan separatism among the restive Kurdish community in Turkey.

In the latest of stern warnings to Iraqi Kurds, the Turkish army last week threatened a response "at the highest level" following an incident in which it said its soldiers were harassed at a checkpoint in Sulaimaniyah.

Both Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the president of the country's autonomous Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani, rejected Ankara's threats and instead called for diplomacy to resolve the problems.