Centre convenes high-level meeting for possible talks with Ulfa

The Centre has convened a high-level meeting next month to chalk out its strategy on possible talks with United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa).

The meeting, to be chaired by home minister P Chidambaram and attended by Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi and top officials, will work out modalities for future talks with Ulfa, home ministry officials said.

The move assumes significance in view of the fact that the entire top leadership of Ulfa, barring its wing military wing chief Paresh Baruah, are currently in jail.

The Centre has already made it clear that it was ready to hold talks with the ULFA if the outfit shuns violence and give
up its demand for sovereignty of Assam.

Ulfa chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa, who was arrested along with some other leaders along Indo-Bangladesh border in December 2009 had, however, said there can be no talks with "handcuffs on".

"We have to be free. We want peace but not in this way"," he had said when he was produced in a Guwahati court in handcuffs.

Paresh Baruah, who is believed to be in Myanmar, had said "we are ready for a dialogue provided sovereignty for Assam is discussed". The Centre had held three rounds of talks with the Ulfa-appointed peace panel, the People's Consultative Group
(PCG) with people drawn from the civil society, in 2005 to explore the possibilities for opening talks between Ulfa and
the government.

The PCG had held three rounds of exploratory talks, including one meeting with prime minister Manmohan Singh.

The PCG's efforts failed after the central government rejected certain demands like holding talks on the issue of sovereignty.

Ulfa, set up in 1979, has been waging a bloody insurgency movement in the Northeastern state with the demand for a sovereign Assam. The violence perpetrated by it has so far claimed thousands of people.