The Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was freed from house arrest yesterday by a Rome appeals court, and the Italian Foreign Minister, Mr Lamberto Dini, said he would either be tried in Italy or deported.
Earlier Italian judicial sources said that Germany had cancelled an international arrest warrant for Ocalan, but the German federal court of justice denied this.
Mr Dini said: "The options we have are to explore the possibility of trying Ocalan in Italy, otherwise there remains only the solution of deporting him, given that he arrived illegally in Italy."
In Ankara the Turkish Defence Minister, Mr Ismet Sezgin, said that the Italian court decision was "incomprehensible", and it would affect relations between the two countries.
Mr Ocalan, who was arrested in Rome on November 12th after arriving on a flight from Moscow, was put under house arrest on November 20th, on the basis of the German international arrest warrant.
Turkey also requested Mr Ocalan's extradition to face terrorist charges linked to the PKK's 14-year struggle for Kurdish independence.
Italy turned down the request, on the grounds that it could not extradite someone to a country which maintained the death penalty. Meanwhile the wife of the late French president, Ms Danielle Mitterrand, yesterday met Mr Ocalan and a number of Italian politicians. Ms Mitterrand is the president of a human rights association she founded, France-Libertes.