IMPRISONED Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan today called on his resistance group to lay down its arms and dissolve as part of a new bid to end a four-decade conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

In a message from his prison on an island off Istanbul on Thursday, Mr Ocalan said that the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), should hold a congress and decide to disband.

“Convene your congress and make a decision. All groups must lay their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself,” Mr Ocalan said, according to a message that was relayed by pro-Kurdish party politicians who visited the imprisoned leader earlier in the day.