NEW DELHI — India is willing to begin peace talks with Maoist rebels, but only if the insurgents halt all attacks for 72 hours, the home minister said today.
The offer followed a rebel ambush Monday of a bus in central India that killed 31 police officers and civilians and highlighted the Maoists’ strength despite a government offensive aimed at ending one of Asia’s longest rebellions.
The rebels, who have tapped into the rural poor’s growing anger at being left out of the country’s economic gains, are now present in 20 of the country’s 28 states and have an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 fighters, according to the Home Ministry.
Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in a television interview today that the government welcomes peace talks, as long as the insurgents halt attacks.
“I make the offer now: The Maoists should say, ‘We abjure violence, we suspend violence,’ and actually suspend violence, from any date they fix for 72 hours,” he told the CNN-IBN news channel.
The government would then convene talks with the insurgents, he said.
The CNN-IBN television news channel quoted Ramanna, a Maoist leader in Chhattisgarh state, as saying over the phone that the government should first withdraw thousands of paramilitary soldiers deployed to fight the rebels and create peaceful conditions for talks. Ramanna uses one name.
In a sign the government is also losing patience with the ongoing rebel attacks, Chidambaram expressed a willingness to authorize the use of air power in the fight.
“The security forces, the chief ministers want air support,” he said in an earlier interview with NDTV. “They are the men on the ground.”
When asked why he cannot convince the Cabinet to authorize airstrikes, Chidambaram said: “I’ll try.”
Top Indian officials have been reluctant to escalate the fight, arguing it is inappropriate to use airstrikes against India’s own citizens.
The home minister said the government would need to revisit its policies after a spate of recent insurgent attacks.
Last month, the rebels ambushed a paramilitary patrol, killing 76 troops. They also kidnapped and killed six villagers over the weekend, alleging they were police informants.
In Monday’s attack, the insurgents remotely triggered a land mine under the bus carrying civilians and police in Chhattisgarh, which has been the site of fierce fighting, said senior police officer Rajinder Kumar Vij.
More than a dozen insurgents fired rifles at the survivors and tried to take away weapons from the slain police, but ran off when wounded officers fired at them, Vij said.
The attack killed 16 civilians and 15 police, Vij said. The initial death toll was reported at 35, and it was not clear why it had been revised. Another 27 people were hospitalized, he said.
Police often ride in civilian buses, apparently hoping the insurgents would not target the vehicles for fear of losing local support.
Television images showed the bodies and the officers’ weapons strewn across the road in Dantewada district, about 350 miles south of Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh.
India has inducted thousands of paramilitary forces to help police fight the insurgents. Last year, the government announced an “Operation Green Hunt” offensive aimed at flushing the militants out of their forest hide-outs.
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