ANKARA (AP) - Turkey’s pro-Kurdish political party yesterday called on the country’s main Kurdish rebel group to declare a new ceasefire.

Ahmet Turk, chairman of the Democratic Society Movement, said his party hoped the autonomy-seeking Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, would respond positively to the call, which he said was aimed at giving peace “a new chance.”

Last year, the guerrilla group heeded a similar call from the pro-Kurdish party, but the rebels ended their unilateral truce more than a month later, saying the government had failed to recognize the rebel group and was maintaining its military drive against its members. Turkey has said it will not negotiate with terrorists.

Turkey and the United States have made recent moves to cooperate in fighting the rebels, with a focus on eliminating their bases across the border in Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq.

Washington appointed former Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston as special envoy for countering the PKK. He is scheduled to arrive in Turkey for consultations tomorrow, Turkish government spokesman Cemil Cicek said.

Eric Green, the US consul in the southern city of Adana, said yesterday the goal of Gen. Ralston was to prevent northern Iraq “from being used as a staging area for attacks against Turkey and the people of Turkey.”

On Sunday, nationalists protested the government’s inability to end the attacks.

“Everybody should come to their senses,” Cicek warned the protesters against raising the tensions in the country.