The Nationwide Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT) will hold an informal meeting with the quasi-governmental Myanmar Peace Center (MPC) on August 3rd in the Kachin State capital of Myitkyina, according to NCCT member Colonel Khun Okker. The NCCT is a group that has been negotiating a nationwide ceasefire with Naypyidaw on behalf of armed ethnic groups
Col. Khun Okker said that at the recent Ethnic Armed Organizations Summit the NCCT laid down a 10-point plan which articulates the positions they will take during upcoming negotiations with the Union Peacemaking Work Committee (UPWC), the body that is negotiating a nationwide ceasefire with armed ethnic groups on behalf of the Burmese government. The NCCT will discuss the details of the 10-point plan with the MPC when the two groups meet later this week.
“The ten points….include a tripartite framework, and it is a new form. It is different from what the UN once said the tripartite [will be]. Yes, this [tripartite framework] does include three main strong groups, but these three groups will only be filled with suitable groups,” said Col. Khun Okker in an interview with IMNA.
Col. Khun Okker continued that the three groups involved in the tripartite framework include a government group, an ethnic armed group, and a political group. These three groups will participate in meetings and negotiations for the purpose of creating a political roadmap.
The remaining points of the NCCT’s plan include a demand that conferences on political dialog be recognized as union peace conferences as well as other points on technical cooperation.
NCCT leader Nai Hongsar stated at a July 29th press conference that the NCCT does not accept the government’s proposal to include academic experts and civil society organizations in future political dialogues or union peace conferences after a nationwide ceasefire is signed between the government and ethnic armed groups.
Rather, Nai Hongsar said that as part of the tripartite conference, political dialogue will include government groups, ethnic armed groups, and registered political parties, and that each group will have the same number of representatives. He also said the NCCT does not accept the government’s proposed “eight sectors dialogue.”
In a statement released at the recent Ethnic Armed Organizations Summit in Laiza—the capital of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), whose armed wing is a core NCCT member—NCCT members agreed that the NCCT would maintain its stance that “the national political objective of all ethnic nationalities is a federal union that grants democracy, national equality, and autonomy.”
Although there have been recent reports that the NCCT and the UPWC would be meeting to sign a nationwide ceasefire agreement in Rangoon in the second week of August, this meeting has yet to be confirmed.
