KOLKATA: Leaders of the ruling Left Front in West Bengal will meet here on Monday to determine whether an all-party meeting being planned to restore peace in the troubled Nandigram area be held at the district or State level.

It was decided at the last Left Front meeting that the peace process be initiated by holding all-party talks at the district level. The major Opposition parties — the Trinamool Congress and the Congress — which have been reluctant to participate in any such meeting, subsequently agreed to attend, but insisted that it be held at the State level.

Allies' suggestion

Three Left Front constituents — the All India Forward Bloc (AIFB), the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Communist Party of India — also favoured State-level talks first. This has been proposed to Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Left Front committee Chairman Biman Bose, who is also the Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) State Committee.

It is in view of these developments that Mr. Bose has convened Monday's meeting stating that any decision on the matter will have to be taken after taking into account the opinions of all Left Front partners. Any decision of the Left Front will necessarily have to be taken "jointly" and not "separately [by any of its constituents]," he has asserted.

AIFB's hope

Ashok Ghosh, secretary of the AIFB State Committee, who had earlier been entrusted the task of organising the all-party meeting following a call from Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee expressing her party's decision to participate, said here on Sunday that he was hopeful that the Left Front constituents would collectively agree to State-level talks.

Mr. Ghosh has been seeking the participation of the different Opposition parties in the proposed all-party talks.

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