Exact integrability of the Sasa Satsuma eqation (SSE) in the Liouville sense
is established by showing the existence of an infinite set of conservation
laws. The explicit form of the conserved quantities in term of the fields are
obtained by solving the Riccati equation for the associated 3x3 Lax operator.
The soliton solutions in particular, one and two soliton solutions, are
constructed by the Hirota's bilinear method. The one soliton solutions is also
compared with that found through the inverse scattering method. The gauge
equivalence of the SSE with a generalized Landau Lifshitz equation is
established with the explicit construction oComment: 14 pages, to be published in J. Math. Phys. April-May, 199