Today’s informal meeting between Naypyitaw’s Peace Commission delegation and the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC)’s Delegation for Political Negotiation (DPN) will continue to seek agreement on 4 of the latter’s 8 point proposal, according to Khu Oo Reh, the UNFC’s secretary general and head of the DPN.

“We may say that 4 other points have been agreed in principle,” he says.

The said points are:

Point#1 Joint announcement of nationwide ceasefire

Point#2 Establishment of a Federal Democratic Union

Point#3 Participation in all levels of political dialogues

Point#8 Implementation of development projects in accordance with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) procedures

However, 4 other points still need to be discussed for both common understanding and agreement, he adds.

They are:

Point#4 Laws including the Union Constitution to be drafted based upon decisions reached at the 21st Century Panglong

Point#5 Prior agreement must be reached on Military Code of Conduct (CoC) and ceasefire monitoring terms of references (ToR)

Point#6 Formation of an independent monitoring committee which shall include international representatives acceptable to both sides

Point#7 Formation of an independent mechanism to facilitate resolutions for disputes

“We are not pressing for acceptance of our demands,” he explains, “only for joint endeavor to reach common agreements on them.”

On 3 March, both sides had declared that “agreement in principle” had been reached on all the 8 points. “But we now have to re-negotiate them again, as the Tatmadaw representatives informed us later that they had not taken part in the agreement on 3 March.”

On the government’s side, (Lt-Gen retired) Khin Zaw Oo said, “It’s time we reached agreement. We’ve been negotiating on the same proposal for 14 months already.”