The United Nationalities Alliance (UNA) and the National League Democracy (NLD) will hold a peace conference to establish a national political framework from September 17-18.
“On September 17 and 18th, the UNA and NLD as well as the ’88 Generation Peace and Society group and representatives from the 1990 political parties will have a meeting. It won’t be like the political framework envisioned by the current 56 parties,” said Nai Soe Myint, a member of the UNA and a central executive committee member of the Mon National Party (MNP).
Nai Soe Myint said that the groups are hosting the conference to prepare for the tripartite talks, and to establish a political framework which safeguards the rights of ethnic groups and forms a democratic federal union.
“We will also meet with the United Nationalities Federation Council (UNFC) and discuss the outcome of this conference,” said Nai Soe Myint.
Burma’s 56 political parties held a previous meeting on September 13th and 14th at the Green Hill Hotel in Rangoon to discuss Burma’s political framework; from this meeting a 15-member committee was founded in order to draft the country’s political framework.
Since the NLD, UNA, and the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) were not present at the September meeting, there will be another conference which includes the UNA, NLD, and ’88 Generation Peace and Society group along with representatives who won the 1990 general elections. The conference will focus on the national political framework.
A political framework was recently drafted by the 56 political parties that contested in the 2010 general elections.
The NLD didn’t cooperate with the Nationalities Brotherhood Federation (NBF) in drafting the political framework, so it will have to negotiate its own political framework with the NLD, according to Pu Zo Zam, the NBF’s spokesperson.
After meeting with political parties, the Union Peace-Making Working Committee (UPWC) and the Nationwide Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT) met for the first time last August to initiate the process of drafting a national political framework.
If the UPWC and NCCT manage to sign a nationwide ceasefire agreement, Burma’s political framework must be finalized 90 days after the agreement is signed, so the political parties have recently been working on the political framework draft.
