For the first time this year, senior leaders of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and the Burmese junta met in Myitkyina, the capital of Burma’s northern Kachin State today to resolve the standoff on transforming the Kachin Independence Army, said sources close to Kachin delegates.

KIO leaders from its headquarters in Laiza in Kachin State, near the Sino–Burma border met two senior Burmese military officials in Myitkyina--- Lt-Gen Ye Myint, chief of Military Affairs Security (MAS) and Naypyitaw-appointed negotiator on transforming ethnic armed groups to the Burmese Army-controlled Border Guard Force (BGF) and Maj-Gen Soe Win commander of Northern Regional Command, said KIO officials.

This is the tenth meeting since April last year and it was held at Mali Hka house in the headquarters of the Northern Regional Command in Myitkyina, between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. local time, according to KIO officers in Myitkyina.

KIO delegates included Chairman Lanyaw Zawng Hra, Vice-president No. 1 Lt-Gen Gauri Zau Seng, Vice Chief of Staff Brig-Gen Sumlut Gun Maw and other senior officials. However, the KIO general secretary Dr. Lahkyen La Ja was absent because he took leave, said KIO officials in Laiza.

The fallout of the meeting is not yet known as KIO delegates had not come back to Laiza headquarters till the evening, said sources close to the delegates.

Kachin politicians are terribly pessimistic about the fruitless negotiations over transforming the KIA to the BGF proposed by the ruling junta.  

Laiza sources said, the KIO will try to submit its demands afresh, redrafted from the previous demands including transforming to the Kachin Regional Guard Force with the current military status and the demands related to the Panglong Agreement, the charter which created the Union of Burma with multiethnic nationalities in February 12, 1947, to the junta.

At the 29 December, 2009 meeting, the junta’s Northern commander Maj-Gen Soe Win responded to the KIO’s demands related to the Panglong Agreement saying  “The age of Panglong has been canceled and it is gone now”, according to KIO delegates.

Now, the junta supremo Senior General Than Shwe is keen on holding countrywide elections this year. Meanwhile the country’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi continues to be under house-arrest at her home in Rangoon.

Meanwhile, all ethnic armed groups are being pressurized to disarm for transforming into the Border Guard Force since April, last year by the junta.