A separatist leader released on bail Saturday said he was committed to peace talks with the Indian government to end his group's 30-year insurgency in the north-eastern state of Assam. Arabinda Rajkhowa was greeted by hundreds of supporters as he left the prison in the state capital of Gauhati, where he had been held since December 2009 on sedition charges.
The state said it approved Rajkhowa's bail of 600,000 rupees ($13,000) in hopes that the 54-year-old rebel leader would call his group's leaders, many of whom are in hiding, to begin peace talks with the government. Rajkhowa thanked the Indian government for taking the initiative in launching a peace process and called for the release of other rebel leaders in detention, including the group's general secretary, Anup Chetia, being held in Bangladesh.
"It is the mood for peace among the people of Assam that has brought us to this situation today, where we are set to begin a peace dialogue with the Indian government," Rajkhowa told his supporters before leaving in a 30-car motorcade for his home village of Lakwa, 825 miles (350 kilometres) east of Gauhati.
More than 10,000 people have died since Rajkhowa's United Liberation Front of Asom began fighting in 1979 for an independent homeland to be carved out of India's remote north-east.
The separatists accuse the Indian government of exploiting Assam's natural resources while doing little for the indigenous people, most of whom are ethnically closer to the people of Myanmar and China than to other Indians.
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