Bhutan said Saturday it would hold a final round of talks with an Indian separatist group to tell the rebels to leave the Himalayan kingdom or face a military crackdown.

State media said Bhutan's council of ministers Friday recommended a "last meeting" with leaders of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), which is fighting a separatist insurgency in the neighboring Indian state of Assam.

"If this meeting produced no positive and concrete result, the council of ministers decided that the only option left was military action," said a resolution by Bhutan's National Assembly, quoted Saturday by the state-owned newspaper Kuensel.

ULFA guerrillas operate out of well-entrenched bases in southern Bhutan, from where they launch hit-and-run attacks on security personnel inside India.

More than 10,000 people have lost their lives to insurgency in Assam during the past two decades.

Bhutan's Home Minister Lyonpo Thinley Gyamtsho told the Assembly session, which was chaired by King Jigmye Singhye Wangchuk, that the government had held six rounds of direct talks with the top ULFA leadership since 1998 on dismantling their camps inside the kingdom.

Community elders and village chiefs from 20 districts participated in the Assembly meeting pledged their support to the government if force was needed to uproot the militants, Kuensel said.

"If there was an armed conflict, the people from all 20 dzongkhags (districts) had pledged their full support in terms of funds, material contributions, and physical participation," the speaker of the National Assembly, Dasho Ugyen Dorji, was quoted saying.

The home minister said the ULFA had six camps in Bhutan, including its general headquarters and a training base.

Another tribal separatist outfit, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, has seven camps inside Bhutan, while a rebel group fighting in the Indian state of West Bengal, the Kamatapur Liberation Organization, has set up two bases inside the tiny Buddhist kingdom, officials said.