During its recent meetings with visiting junta negotiator Lt-Gen Ye Myint, both The Kokang and Wa have expressed their wish to maintain status quo before Naypyidaw made the transformation proposal, according to sources from the Sino-Burma border.
“Things were going smoothly the way it should,” Peng Jiasheng, Chairman of the Kokang’s Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) was quoted as telling Ye Myint on June 4. “Why should you want to change? It’s just like stirring a beehive.”
His next meeting was with the Wa leaders in Panghsang yesterday which lasted three hours, from 1400-1700, in Burmese and Chinese, according to a source lose to the leadership. “All the division commanders onwards were present there,” he said. “And the gist of what we said was the same as what Peng told him earlier.”
The Burmese Army’s chief broker, who is also Chief of the Military Affairs Security (MAS) had nevertheless brought what the Wa regarded as the only good news “He wasn’t harping on the June deadline anymore,” said the source.“ Take your time to reconsider our proposal,’ was his request at the end of the meeting.”
Ye Myint is now in Mongyang, south of Panghsang, on his way to meet the Wa’s southern ally, the National Democratic Alliance Army-Eastern Shan State (NDAA-ESS) led by Sai Leun, at Mongla tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the situation along the Thai-Burma border is tense by all accounts.
“We are being ordered by the area command (of the Burmese Army) to dig bomb shelters and stock rice and dry food,” a village elder in Nakawngmu, 29 miles north of the Chiangmai border, said. “Coming and going across the Salween at Tasang Bridge (between Mongpan in the West and Mongton in the east) has also become difficult since yesterday. There are more questions and more inspections.”
The Wa command on the Thai-Burma border, in addition to the demand to transform itself into a border security force and return to Panghsang, has been ordered to pull out from three strategic outposts. The Wa has so far refused to comply saying, “Our leaders are still in Panghsang.”
