By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON, April 6 (Reuters) – Myanmar’s government started
talks on Friday towards a political agreement with one of the
world’s oldest rebel armies, marking one of the biggest steps
taken by the country’s civilian rulers after decades of conflict
with ethnic minority insurgents.
The talks with the Karen National Union (KNU) were the
beginning of the second stage of a three-phase plan outlined by
the year-old government towards “everlasting peace” with all of
its ethnic minority rebel groups.
The first phase was to establish ceasefires, at regional
then national level. Two government negotiating groups have
struck agreements with about a dozen armies or ethnic-based
political groups that responded to President Thein Sein’s call
for dialogue last August.
“We now have six points on our agenda at the present talks
at the union (national) level,” Tu Tu Lay, a member of the KNU
team, told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting in the
commercial capital, Yangon.
The KNU and its military wing, the Karen National Liberation
Army (KNLA), have fought successive governments for greater
autonomy since 1949, a year after Myanmar gained independence
from Britain.
The KNU is optimistic a political deal can be struck with
the reform-minded civilian government that came to office in
March 2011 when the military ceded power after 49 years of rule.
Analysts and diplomats say the peace process is one of the
biggest challenges facing the government, which has embarked on
an astonishing wave of economic, social and political reforms.
The second stage could be tricky: it will focus on how the
Karen can be brought into the national political fold while
retaining some element of self-governance.
The process is likely to have been boosted by last week’s
by-election landslide by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for
Democracy party in a ballot widely seen as free and fair,
helping the credibility of a government comprised of the same
generals who brutally crushed dissidents and ethnic minorities.
The talks with the Karen were led by Minister of Rail
Transport Aung Min, a moderate of the former junta, who heads
one of the two negotiating teams. He has won the confidence of
many groups, despite decades of mistrust and bad blood.
The army was accused of committing a litany of human rights
abuses against the Karen and other minorities, from rape and
forced labour to torture and murder, violations that convinced
the West to impose sanctions, some of which could be lifted
later this month.
Among the KNU’s demands are ensuring the truce holds,
confidence-building measures, an ending of forced labour and
extortion, the immediate release of political prisoners,
rehabilitation of affected people and redistribution of land.
The government reached its latest ceasefire on Thursday when
it agreed a truce with the Arakan Liberation Party (ALP) to end
a three-decade conflict in the country’s Western Rakhine state,
a senior local government official told Reuters.
(Editing by Martin Petty and Robert Birsel)
