Turkey has begun discussing disarmament with Kurdish militants after concluding that it is unlikely to defeat them militarily, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's chief adviser said on Monday.

The government has been in talks in recent months with Abdullah Ocalan, jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), to end a hunger strike by jailed PKK members, but Monday's comment was the first confirmation that attempts to negotiate a wider peace settlement were on the agenda.

"The main aim for the government is to disarm them. You cannot get results and abolish an organization only with armed struggle," Yalcin Akdogan said in an interview with NTV television.

He said the government was cautious about the prospects of progress: "We have to see how Qandil (PKK headquarters in northern Iraq) will react ... The organization (PKK) also saw that they cannot get anywhere through armed struggle."

After his capture in 1999, Ocalan let it be known that he was open to a political settlement that secured more rights for the Kurds who inhabit Turkey's southeast.