With the Kurdish Rebels in Northern Iraq

Their leader is in prison and being poisoned, they claim, by his jailers. Their enemies are in uproar, almost unanimously baying for their blood. And Nato's second largest war machine is just two valleys away, preparing for their annihilation. Yet as they sat down to a dinner of grilled chicken and salad yesterday, in a flat-roofed stone shack clinging to the side of a mountain, leaders of the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) remained surprisingly buoyant.

Here were some of Turkey's most wanted, dressed in their trademark baggy khaki fatigues, each wearing a small lapel badge bearing the portrait of Abdullah Ocalan, their imprisoned leader. Their mountain redoubts would hold firm, the guerrilla leaders insisted. The world would see they were not terrorists, but freedom fighters. Dialog and peace would eventually solve the Kurdish question in Turkey. Their struggle for Kurdish rights was not about to be vaporised by a barrage of Turkish, or US, rockets.

"We have been in these mountains since 1982," said Bozan Tekin, a PKK leader. "We know every peak, every cave, every ravine. If they come for us, we are prepared, but I don't think they will. And besides we have many more fighters in Turkey." Mizgin Ahmed, another PKK leader, indicated that the group had no immediate plans to leave, as Iraq's president Jalal Talabani last week demanded.

"No one has actually come to us and directly asked us to get out," said Ms Ahmed. Nevertheless, the omens for the rump PKK fighters in northern Iraq are sombre. Over the past week, Turkish ground and air forces have shelled and bombed their positions. The Turkish army claims to have killed at least 64 suspected rebels, though the claim is strongly denied by the PKK. A high-level Iraqi delegation arrived in Ankara for talks yesterday as Turkey's president, Abdullah Gul, kept up the pressure on Iraq and the US to take decisive action against the rebels.

"We are totally determined to take all the necessary steps to end this threat," Mr Gul said. The Americans meanwhile upped the pressure on Iraq's Kurds to halt the flow of supplies and funds and restrict the movement of the PKK fighters, who occupy an area that is nominally within the control of the Kurdistan regional government.

The PKK, at least the 2,000 or so who remain in northern Iraq, appear to be fast running out of options. "We have been misrepresented", said Abdul Rahaman Chaderchi, belying a frustration that they are referred to in the same breath as al-Qaida. "We are not terrorists. We share the same goals of democracy and human rights as the west," said Ms Ahmed. "We are fighting Turkish chauvinism and its long denial of basic rights to Kurds. We want to see a Turkey that can meet the criteria of joining the EU."

The PKK was not seeking to establish an independent Kurdish homeland, she added, and they were not separatists, as many in the western and Turkish media labelled them. "We want to see full cultural and political rights for Kurds within the framework of a democratic Turkey," she said. There should also be the establishment of an independent truth and reconciliation-style committee to look at the "actions and atrocities" that have been committed "by both sides" in the 25-year civil war in the south-east.

PKK leaders say they have sent 10 letters to the US in Iraq, promising cooperation. But their violent campaign has earned them pariah status. An American official in Iraq said simply: "We don't deal with the PKK." There is growing criticism among Kurds of the rebel military leadership for needlessly escalating their operations against the Turkish military.

"It is not us who is escalating," said Mr Tekin. "We do not attack across the border. We have guerrillas in Turkey. We declared a ceasefire one year ago at the request of many different parties, including the Iraqi Kurdish leaders and the US. Yet what have we seen from the Turkish state? Nothing but violence."

He said that since the rebels' unilateral ceasefire, the Turkish military had poured troops into the south-east and conducted 485 military operations on both Turkish and Iraqi soil, "sometimes in cooperation with Iran".

So what would it take for the PKK to put down its guns? "We want some guarantees on the health of our leader," said Ms Ahmed. "We believe he is being poisoned in his prison cell. We want the Turkish military to pull back to its barracks. And we want Turkey to officially recognize the Kurds' identity and culture. Then we will disarm tomorrow."

Ankara rejects negotiations with a group it dismisses as "terrorists".

As the PKK leaders chewed over their future, the distant rumble of a jet rolled up the valley. There was a brief pause as everyone looked up into the night sky, And then they relaxed.