A senior Kachin ethnic leader from Burma’s northern Kachin State arrived in Singapore for a gall bladder surgery, said sources close to the patient.

Lt-Gen N’ban La Awng, vice-chairman of Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and chief of the armed-wing, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) arrived in Singapore from Rangoon yesterday afternoon. He will be operated upon to remove stones from his gall bladder, said sources in Singapore.

The KIO/KIA leader departed for the city-state even as tension mounts on transforming KIA to the Burmese Army-controlled Border Guard Force.

The health condition of the vice-chairman is not serious, sources added. He is yet to be operated on.

The vice-chairman has been suffering from gall bladder pain since 2000, KIO officers in Laiza Headquarters in northern Burma, near the China border told Kachin News Group today.

Burma’s junta supremo Snr-Gen Than Shwe and fellow military brass often go to Singapore for medical attention, Burmese community sources in Singapore said.

Meanwhile, though the junta is yet to give permission for the festival, the KIO will hold the ceremony and cultural Manau dance festival called “Ninggawn Htingram Manau” in its territory in Kasung Pa, the base of KIA battalion 11 under the 2nd brigade of KIA, on the scheduled days next week--- from February 23 to 27, a KIO official in the Laiza headquarters said.

At the same time, the KIO/KIA, the last remaining Kachin armed group, which is yet to toe the junta’s line, will have to come clean on whether the KIO will accept the junta-proposed setting up of seven battalions of the Border Guard Force by the end of February, according to KIO officers in Laiza.