14-year-old Kurdish insurgency under arrest in Italy and facing extradition to Turkey.

Abdullah Ocalan was arrested Thursday after stepping off a plane from Moscow, where he had

sought asylum after recently fleeing his hideout in Syria.

``He's a notorious assassin, the worst terrorist of our century,'' Turkey's ambassador to Italy, Inal

Batu, said in an interview with Associated Press Television News on Saturday.

The ANSA news agency, citing unidentified sources, said Ocalan had asked for political asylum

in Italy. The Interior Ministry had no comment on the report.

Ocalan leads the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, which has been fighting for autonomy

in southeastern Turkey since 1984. Nearly 37,000 people have died in the conflict.

Hundreds of Kurds demonstrated Saturday outside the prison in Rome where Ocalan had been

held. Scuffles broke out and at least two Turkish journalists said they'd been beaten by PKK

militants.

``Italian police just looked on,'' said Abdurrahaman Keskin, a Turkish state television reporter

who appeared on the air with a bloodied face.

The National Front for the Liberation of Kurdistan, an umbrella group seen as the political wing

of the PKK, said Kurds from throughout Europe planned to converge on Rome to protest Ocalan's

arrest.

Italian officials said Ocalan was picked up on arrival Thursday at Leonardo da Vinci airport in

Rome because of an outstanding Turkish warrant. He was carrying a false passport.

Ocalan is on trial in absentia in Turkey on charges of leading a terrorist organization, threatening

the country's territorial integrity and ordering killings, charges that can bring the death penalty.

Although there have been no executions in Turkey since 1984, Italy consistently has refused to

extradite anyone if there was even a risk of capital punishment.

Batu, the Turkish ambassador, said Saturday that Turkey was considering either abolishing its

death penalty or assuring Italy it would not be imposed on Ocalan in order to win his extradition.

The ambassador said Ocalan would undergo initial questioning by an Italian magistrate on

Tuesday.

It was unclear why Ocalan would travel to Italy, which is not known to be a hub for Turkish

Kurdish rebels.

Leftist politicians in Italy are sympathetic to the PKK and the leader of the Italian Communists,

Armando Cossutta, called on Italy to grant Ocalan asylum.

Ocalan, a political science dropout from Ankara university, founded the Marxist-inspired PKK in

1978. He turned the group toward armed struggle in 1984, finding fertile ground among poor

Kurds in the underdeveloped southeast.

The Turkish army claims it all but wiped out the PKK within Turkey, but the rebels have hideouts

in Iran, Syria, and Iraq and the fighting continues.

AP-NY-11-14-98 1235EST