Reacting to newspaper reports quoting a Union home ministry booklet that the ULFA has set up several income-generating units in Bangladesh, ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa also challenged the government to dismiss the rebel group's demand for a sovereign state through genuine debate.

``The government of India has indulged in a series of cheap propaganda against us after failing miserably to make us surrender or come to the table for negotiations,'' Rajkhowa, in a nine-page statement in Assamese, issued over fax to local newspaper offices, said.

The Union home ministry had recently distributed copies of a booklet called ``Bleeding Assam: Role of the ULFA'', which hadgiven details about the ULFA setting up various income-generating projects in Bangladesh, as also forging links with the Myanmarese drug lord and mafia don Khun Sa.

``The efforts of the government of India to tarnish our image by such false and cheap propaganda also proves that the government is genuinely affected by the ULFA's struggle,'' Rajkhowa has claimed.

Referring to the mention in the booklet about lavish five-star lifestyle of top ULFA leaders, he even tried to compare it with Mahatma Gandhi's trips to London to attend round table conferences. ``Gandhi definitely stayed in some good place while taking part in those conferences,'' the ULFA chief said.

Referring to the award of six years' imprisonment by a Dhaka court to ULFA general secretary Anup Chetia, he said it was an ``unfortunate'' development, but ``it cannot bog down Chetia or the organisation.''

Chetia, arrested by the Bangladesh police from a posh Dhaka house on December 21, 1997, has been awarded six years' nine months imprisonmentby the Dhaka metropolitan magistrate on Saturday. Chetia on his part has sought political asylum in Dhaka.