HYDERABAD: The CPI (Maoist) has turned down the offer of talks by Home Minister K Jana Reddy after the ambush of the Greyhounds in the Sileru-Balimela reservoir on the AP-Orissa border recently.

The party made it clear that it would not repeat its mistake of parleying with the Government. In a statement here on Saturday, party central military commission chief Basavraj and central committee spokesperson Azad said: "We assure the people of AP and India that we will not make the mistake of going in for talks with these double-dealers (Congressmen)."

They blamed Rajasekhara Reddy and Jana Reddy for the failure of the talks in 2004 and charged them with hypocrisy in saying that violence had no place in democracy while themselves presiding over the cold-blooded murder of several hundred Maoist revolutionaries, sympathisers and innocent people.

The Maoist spokesmen said their movement eschewed violence per se but necessarily had to counter the repression of the State. They hailed the PLGA of the Andhra- Orissa Border for the Balimela reservoir operation and described the Greyhounds as a force that had unleashed a reign of terror in AP.

The PLGA, and revolutionaries in general, would punish Congress leaders and police officials in similar fashion if they continued to indulge in attacks in the name of retaliation, they said.