ULFA launches counter attack against renewed army operations

Guwahati, Sep 26 (UNI) ULFA has strongly condemned the renewed army operation, targeting both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, while asking its frontal organisations to mobilise public support against the army activity.

Both Chairman Aurobindo Rajkhowa and Commander-in-Chief Paresh Barua issued separate statements last night, while the People's Consultative Group (PCG) and the People's Committee for Peace initiatives in Assam (PCPIA) have also criticised the government action.

Meanwhile, the main focus of the security forces have remained Tinsukia and the 28th Battalion, the strike force of the ULFA, which has been responsible for most of the violence in the last few months, official sources said, adding that there have not been any significant success besides the killing of at least four ULFA militants in three days.

The ULFA accused the Prime Minister of launching ''false propaganda'' against them and blamed the Centre of adopting 'double standards' on the issue of talks besides accusing it of using the peace process as poll plank.

''The Centre by showing 'false' interest in talks with the ULFA managed to hold polls in Asom and then staged a 'drama' by suspending operations against us to ensure peaceful celebration of Independence Day,'' ULFA chairman Aurobindo Rajkhowa said in a statement e-mailed to the local media here last night.

But the intelligence officials dismissed the e-mailed statements as a ''diversionary tactics'' of the ULFA.

''They survive through these statements but people of Asom can now understand that,'' a senior counter insurgency official from Dinjan, the headquarters of the operation of upper Asom, said.

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