By Biswajyoti Das

GUWAHATI, India, May 8 (Reuters) - A powerful rebel group in India's revolt-racked northeast accused New Delhi on Thursday of encouraging rival groups to attack them and sabotage a decade-old peace process aimed to end the long-running insurgency.

A senior leader of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-Issac-Muivah) faction said the group had lost faith in the government's sincerity in finding a lasting solution to the problems.

"India is not at all interested to solve our problems," R.H. Raising, a senior NSCN-IM leader said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

"The government is now busy encouraging rival factions to attack our cadres and camps to derail the whole peace initiative."

A home ministry official in New Delhi said the government would not comment right away.

The NSCN split into two factions in the late 1980s and the breakaway group, NSCN (Khaplang) is said to be backed by the government, political analysts say.

The two groups regularly fight against each other, but in recent months the Khaplang group had the upper hand, in which dozens of militants from either side have been killed in the past two weeks.

To make matters worse, two senior leaders of the NSCN-IM recently deserted the organisation and formed a separate group.

The defectors were appointed as ministers this week in the parallel underground government run by the Khaplang group, further complicating the issue.

"How can we trust India when no steps are taken to reign in the new group, whose activists are killing our boys almost every day," Raising said.

The NSCN-IM leaders and Indian officials have met more than 50 times over the past ten years to end the conflict that has killed thousands of people and soldiers.

Nagaland is a mainly Christian state of two million people on India's far northeastern border with Myanmar. (Editing by Bappa Majumdar and Sanjeev Miglani)

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