NEW DELHI, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- A senior Maoist insurgency leader has proposed a simultaneous cease-fire between rebels and the Indian government to allow for peace talks to begin.
Koteswara Rao made the offer in radio interviews with Bengali media.
The offer came two days after Indian President Pratibha Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked the Maoists to declare a cease-fire and return to the discussion table.
Rao, who also goes by the name Kishenji, said it was the government's "last chance" for peace to end the decades-long fighting between the jungle-based guerrillas and security forces that killed more than 1,100 people last year alone.
"The president and the prime minister, in their Independence Day speeches, have appealed to the Maoists to abjure violence," said Kishenji.
"We are never for violence, but the government has instigated us to take up arms. When our comrade Azad was preparing ground for talks, he was treacherously killed. It is very clear from the activities of the government that they don't want any peace."
Azad, the nom de guerre for Cherukuri Rajkumar, was killed by security forces in a gunfight in Andhra Pradesh state in July. He was the No. 2 Maoist leader in Andhra Pradesh and often acted as a spokesperson for the guerrillas.
"If the prime minister is keen to restore peace and normalcy in the disturbed areas of the country, then he will have to take an initiative to withdraw joint forces and order a judicial inquiry into the murder of Azad," Kishenji said.
Several cease-fires have been tried in the past decade, but few have accomplished any long-term results to help stabilize rural areas in India's eastern and north eastern states, called the Red Corridor by security forces.
The central government has been fighting the insurgents since the late 1960s when communist-led groups from the village of Naxalbari in West Bengal state began a low-level civil disturbance campaign.
Many Maoists, also called Naxalites, are members or former members of various legal communist splinter groups. They demand more of the wealth from the region's natural resources, especially from new mining projects, be spread among the mainly rural poor.
Kishenji, in his offer of a simultaneous cease-fire with the government, said he wanted money being spent to modernize police forces to be used for employment and income-generation schemes in underdeveloped areas of the states.
Since 2004 nearly 600 people have been killed each year.
But a surge in deaths last year to 1,134 prompted the government to launch Operation Green Hunt, an ongoing military offensive by 50,000 Central Reserve Police Force soldiers who are backing tens of thousands of regular policemen.
The result has been more clashes with heavier casualties on both sides.
Kishenji said he would have "no problem" accepting as peace-talks mediator Mamata Banerjee, India's minister for railways.
Banerjee, 55, is a West Bengali noted for her championing of the poor within central government policy debates. She has also opposed the government's special economic zones for big businesses and general industrialization in West Bengal at the cost of improving the economic situation of farmers and laborers.
