I think one should not forget the logical contradiction between demanding sovereignty and making public a set of supplementary demands. This holds no matter how unlikely or unrealistic the event that the GOI is going to agree to grant independence. Sovereignty is virtually all encompassing. It would be incredibly stupid if the leaders of the ULFA were to say we want independence for Assam and, by the way, lets also talk about handing over the rights to oil extraction to the state government. Even if the ULFA leadership is not Harvard trained, they have at least shown the intelligence to not say something like that. If forces outside the ULFA want to influence the terms of negotiation and get their ideas about what a secondary set of demands ought to be, they ought to go about forming public opinion on this independently of the ULFA and hope the organization will echo them in their own political interest. But they should not expect that at this stage (and even many stages ahead), the ULFA is going to go around publicly voicing the details of their minimum acceptable point. Santanu.
_______________________________________________ Assam mailing list [email protected] http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam Mailing list FAQ: http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/assam/assam-faq.html To unsubscribe or change options: http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/options/assam
