Hurriyat Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who will lead the delegation, immediately accepted the invitation for the talks that will take place nine days ahead of Manmohan's meeting with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in New York.

"The Prime Minister has invited Hurriyat Chairman and other leaders for talks," the Prime Minister's Media Adviser Sanjaya Baru said.

The Hurriyat has been insisting on holding talks with the Prime Minister only although the Government had proposed meetings with Home Minister Shivraj Patil. The separatist leaders had held two rounds of talks with the then Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani in January and March last year in previous NDA government.

Declaring that communalism, insurgency and violence would be dealt with firmly, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday told political groups to test and demonstrate their popularity through polls saying there is no grievance that cannot be redressed through democratic means and dialogue.

"Every political group that claims to represent the interests of any section of our people must test and demonstrate its popularity through the institutions of our democracy", Singh said at the National Integration Council (NIC), which is meeting after a gap of almost 13 years.

At the same time, the Prime Minister said that while promoting national integration and core value of tolerance, any overt challenges in the form of communalism, extremism, separatism and insurgency and violence would be "dealt with firmly".

"There is no grievance, howsoever, extreme and desperate, that cannot be redressed through democratic means. Our democracy allows us the freedom to espouse our cause and win people over to our point of view", he said inaugurating the day-long Conference.