Sweden's Chief Prosecutor, Mr Jan Danielsson, said yesterday he would press for access to the Kurdish guerrilla chief, Mr Abdullah Ocalan, currently detained in Rome, to question him about the murder of the Swedish prime minister, Mr Olof Palme, 12 years ago.
Although Mr Ocalan and his Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) were not widely believed to have been involved in the assassination of Mr Palme in 1986, Swedish authorities said the PKK may have information about the unsolved murder, which has haunted Sweden for 12 years.
Meanwhile, a Kurdish protester set himself alight in the centre of Rome yesterday in a protest against Mr Ocalan's detention there, a police spokesman said. The protester, in his 30s, was taken to hospital, where his condition was not immediately known.
Mr Danielsson, who heads the Palme investigation, said that "information exists that Abdullah Ocalan knows about the murder. We want to ask him what he knows."
Mr Ocalan, Turkey's most wanted man for nearly 20 years, was arrested last Thursday in Rome, and the outlawed PKK has threatened to retaliate. He is resisting extradition to Turkey, where authorities hold him responsible for more than 29,000 deaths.
Some 50 Kurdish refugees supporting the PKK, which has fought for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish south-east since 1984, went on hunger-strike in Stockholm against Mr Ocalan's detention.
"If it's possible to talk to Ocalan we'll take up the opportunity to resolve some uncertainties that still exist in the Palme case," Mr Danielsson told Swedish network television SVT.
In April this year Turkish newspapers quoted a PKK commander, Mr Semdin Sakik, seized by Turkish troops in northern Iraq, as saying: "We killed Olof Palme".
Turkish media said Mr Sakik told investigators that Mr Ocalan had ordered a Kurdish rebel based in Sweden to kill Mr Palme after eight members of the group were expelled from the country.
Asked if Mr Ocalan was involved in the murder, Mr Danielsson said: "I personally don't think so."
Mr Palme was shot dead in a central Stockholm street in February 1986 as he was walking home from the cinema with his wife, unaccompanied by bodyguards.
Meanwhile, Ankara stepped up the pressure on Italy to extradite Mr Ocalan encouraging people to send an avalanche of fax messages to Italy demanding that ???????he calan be handed over. Turkish nationalists demonstrated in their thousands in Ankara and Istanbul for his extradition.
The Turkish Prime Minister, Mr Mesut Yilmaz, bluntly warned Italy that Ankara would retaliate if Mr Ocalan was not extradited. "No Turkish government, present or future, will leave this wrong unanswered," he said, without stipulating what form retaliation might take. He also said that Italy would be an accomplice to mass murder if it failed to accede to the extradition request.
The Italian Prime Minister, Mr Massimo D'Alema retorted yesterday that these comments were "unacceptable. "Italy will not be subjected to unjustifiable intimidation," Mr D'Alema said.
The US has added its weight to calls for Mr Ocalan to be extradited, the State Department said yesterday.
The Italian Defence Minister, Mr Carlo Scognamiglio, tried to calm the situation, calan's arrest yesterday, down Wednesday, saying that Italy would handle the case according to the country's laws, without the need to turn it into an international issue.
The Turkish government said it would continue to "press by every means available" that Mr Ocalan be returned to Turkey to stand trial.
In a press release issued in Dublin, Ankara said: "Ocalan has been responsible for thousands of deaths, kidnappings, mutilations, and attacks on innocent people during his quarter-century long career as a professional terrorist."
The Turkish authorities say Mr Ocalan worked closely with the Soviet Union and Syria from the late 1970s in attempting to create "political breakdown" in Turkey.
Last month Turkey informed Syria that it would act if Syrian government did not suspend support for Mr Ocalan's associates, and requested formally the extradition of Mr Ocalan to Turkey.