21 January 2004	Wednesday	28 Ziqa'ad 1424

AGARTALA, Jan 20: The chief minister of Tripura said on Tuesday his state was being "bled profusely" by militants striking from Bangladesh and demanded that New Delhi tell Dhaka to shut down alleged rebel camps.

Nearby Bhutan and Myanmar, under similar pressure, recently launched a successful military offensive against Indian rebels operating from their soil. Hundreds have died in the remote northeastern state - surrounded on three sides by an 855-km border with Bangladesh - in the past decade as tribal rebels wage a bloody insurgency against Indian rule.

New Delhi and the communist state government say rebels operate with impunity from dozens of camps in Bangladesh, attacking Indian troops and killing ethnic Bengali settlers.

"If these sort of militant attacks continue from Bangladesh, the people of India will not tolerate it. Tripura and India are being bled profusely," chief minister Manik Sarkar said in Agartala, the state capital, on Monday.

Mr Sarkar is flying to New Delhi to brief officials on camps of the two main tribal insurgent groups operating in Tripura from Bangladesh. He is expected to meet Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

New Delhi says there are at least 90 Indian insurgent camps in Bangladesh. Mr Sarkar says about 50 of them belong to the two groups operating in Tripura, a small state with a population of 2.8 million people and rich in natural gas.

"Why is Bangladesh allowing anti-India groups to operate from its territory? This is not friendly relations," he said. Dhaka regularly says it has investigated Indian charges on rebel camps on its soil and found them to be "baseless".

But after the tiny kingdom of Bhutan - closely allied to India and adjoining the northeast - launched a military campaign last month to oust some 3,000 Indian rebels from its soil, New Delhi has been stepping up pressure on Bangladesh to do likewise.

A foreign ministry official in New Delhi said on Tuesday the issue of Indian rebel camps had come up between Mr Vajpayee and Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia during the Saarc summit in Pakistan this month, but gave no details.

India's mountainous northeast is home to more than 200 ethnic groups and dozens of insurgent organizations - some fighting for independence, others for greater autonomy.

They blame New Delhi for exploiting the region's resources including tea, oil and gas and flooding it with outsiders, especially Bengalis, but doing little to develop the area.-Reuters