German Government Calls for Kurdish Agitators’ Expulsion : Unrest: Request to individual states follows four days of riots. At least 90 police have been hurt.

The German government and a national police union called Tuesday for the expulsion of hundreds of supporters of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party after four days of violent demonstrations that have left at least 90 police injured and one protester dead.

Police have arrested more than 300 Kurds who rioted and set up fiery road barricades in cities throughout the country after the government prohibited their rallies for an independent homeland in southeast Turkey.

At least five Kurds have set themselves on fire at the demonstrations, which coincide with the Kurdish New Year. One of them, an unidentified woman who ignited herself in Mannheim, died of her burns Tuesday, RTL television reported.

Interior Minister Manfred Kanther offered 600 federal police to German states late Tuesday to clear further blockades; he pressed state governments to act quickly to deport protesters.

“The acts of violence . . . by the Kurdish perpetrators challenge the state in an unbearable way,” Kanther said Tuesday. “The offenders must, as far as possible, be expelled and deported from Germany.”

In Germany, foreigner asylum cases and deportations are handled by states rather than by the federal government, as happens in the United States. Foreigners residing legally in the country must be convicted of a crime before they can be expelled; those seeking political asylum have a right to finish the asylum process before they can be deported.

Kanther called a meeting of state officials for today to discuss ways to speed up pending asylum proceedings.

Kanther said Monday that the government will not deport Kurds who face the death penalty at home, in accord with international human rights conventions. But he also said the threat of arrest in Turkey would be insufficient grounds to prevent a Kurd’s expulsion. He added that Kurds are not persecuted throughout Turkey.

Human rights advocates responded that Kurds face certain arrest and possible torture and death in jails in Turkey, where the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, has been fighting for an independent homeland since 1984.

The riots began last weekend when more than 7,000 Kurds demonstrated in the cities of Augsburg, Wiesbaden and Berlin. Hundreds of them hurled firebombs, stoned police and blockaded highways with buses and burning tires, officials said; 85 police were injured in the clashes, in which dozens of Kurds were arrested.

On Monday and Tuesday, Kurdish demonstrators again lit fires and set up barricades on roads around Bonn, Frankfurt, Bremen, Berlin and other cities. They carried signs saying “Stop the Massacre in Kurdistan” and “No Military Aid to Turkey.”

The German government provides weaponry to the Turkish government through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of which Turkey is a member.

Police reported about 330 arrests in the states of Hessen, North Rhineland-Westphalia and Hamburg. Five police officers and three Kurds were injured in a clash in Giessen, north of Frankfurt.

German Police Union leader Harald Thielmann called for the Kurds’ deportation, saying, “It is no longer acceptable to German citizens and to the police that these extremists wage their war here at the expense of the police and under cover of human rights conventions.”

The PKK was banned in Germany last November after the government accused it of carrying out attacks on Turkish businesses.

Reane Oppl of The Times’ Bonn Bureau contributed to this report.