The eight Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) signatories want to schedulr the third session of the 21st Century Panglong Conference to coincide with Union Day, in February 2018.
The group agreed on the February date at their 16th Peace Process Steering Team (PPST) meeting, which was held from November 14 to 15.
“There are still areas [of the country] that haven’t held national-level dialogues yet. A lot of preparations need to be made,” said Salai Lian Hmung, vice chair of the Chin National Front (CNF).
“But we will need to coordinate with the government at the upcoming UPDJC [Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee] meeting,” which will be held at the end of November, he added.
At the November meeting, the PSST also approved the Union Accords bill, which the ethnic armed organizations drafted in anticipation for the third Panglong Conference session.
The first session of the 21st Century Panglong Conference, also known as the Union Peace Conference, was held from August 31 to September 4, 2016, and was widely criticized for failing to secure tangible gains to the country’s long-running ethnic conflicts. While originally the conferences were supposed to be convened every six months, the next conference was delayed, with a second session held May 24 to 28, 2017.
Peace talks between government negotiators and members of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), planned for November 16, were also postponed, the Irrawaddy reported this week.
The UNFC has come under considerable pressure to join the NCA, which was signed in October 2015 by eight ethnic armed organizations and the previous Thein Sein-led administration.
The current administration has adopted the NCA as a requisite for participating in political dialogues and as full members at the Panglong summits. Five UNFC member groups have responded by resigning from the alliance this year, most recently the Shan State Progressive Party/Shan State Army-North (SSPP/SSA-N) in August.
