Rangoon to Meet with Ceasefire Groups

Nandar Chann

Irrawaddy 3 December 2004

Lt-Gen Thein Sein, secretary-1 of the State Peace and Development Council, is scheduled to meet this weekend with leaders of ceasefire groups from northern Shan State. Talks will center around the National Convention, the assembly charged with drafting a new constitution.

Thein Sein, who chairs the “National Convention Convening Committee”, will arrive in Lashio, northern Shan State, on Saturday. He will meet leaders of the Shan State Army-North, or SSA-N; the Shan State National Army, or SSNA; the United Wa State Party, or UWSP; the Palaung State Liberation Organization, or PSLO; the Kachin Democratic Army, or KDA; and the Myanmar National Democracy Alliance Army, or MNDAA, based in the Kokang region.

“We don’t know the exact time of the meeting, but we leaders have been summoned to meet with him [Thein Sein],” said an SSA-N officer on Friday. Both the chairman and vice-chairman of the SSA-N expect to see Thein Sein. “[We] plan to attend the Convention, but there will be changes among our representatives,” he added.

This weekend, Thein Sein is expected to discuss the joint proposal paper of thirteen ethnic ceasefire groups, which was submitted during the previous session of the National Convention on July 9.

The paper includes a recommendation that planned state assemblies be granted some legislative authority independent of Rangoon. The proposal also calls for state assemblies to have the right to maintain militias autonomous of the Burma Army.

The National Convention Committee had dismissed the ceasefire groups’ proposal and urged them to amend it.

The National Convention, opened in May and adjourned in July, is the first item of a seven-point “road map” for political reform announced by then-prime minister Gen Khin Nyunt on August 30, 2003. Last month, Rangoon announced that the convention will resume in February 2005.