By IANS,
Guwahati : The outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) Wednesday urged New Delhi to immediately halt military operations against the outfit, saying the peace process would get derailed if anti-insurgency offensives continued.
“Counter-insurgency operations by the military must stop if we want peace in the state. There cannot be peace talks if such operations continue,” jailed ULFA vice chairman Pradeep Gogoi told journalists when he was brought for health checkup at the Gauhati Medical College Hospital.
The call for halting military operations comes on a day when two top leaders, including one of their commanders and a most wanted bomber Basa Singh, was gunned down by army soldiers in a gunfight near Kalaigaon in northern Udalguri district.
Meanwhile, jailed ULFA leaders once again rejected union Home Minister P.C. Chidambaram’s offer for peace talks, saying they cannot write a formal letter for holding negotiations from the prison.
“There is simply no question of writing any letter from inside the jail. Let the government release us from jail and we shall then react positively to take the peace process forward,” jailed ULFA publcity chief Mithinga Daimary said when he too was brought to the hospital along with Gogoi.
Almost the entire top brass of the ULFA is now in jail – ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa, vice chairman Gogoi, deputy commander-in-chief Raju Baruah, “foreign secretary” Sasha Chouhdury, “finance secretary” Chitraban Hazarika, publicity chief Daimary, “cultural secretary” Pranati Deka, and senior-most leader Bhimkanta Buragohain.
Buragohain, 70, is lodged in the Tezpur jail in northern Assam while the other seven rebel leaders are at the Guwahati Central Jail.
The only top leader of the ULFA still at large is commander-in-chief Paresh Baruah, while the outfit’s general secretary Anup Chetia is in Bangladesh following his arrest in 1997.
The jailed ULFA leaders, including its chairman Rajkhowa, have been repeatedly saying that they were ready for talks but not in handcuffs – meaning they want to be released.