Leaders of a dozen Myanmar ethnic armed groups will meet next month in a remote region bordering China to discuss a peace deal, spokesmen said April 20, as the nation edges closer to a full ceasefire.
The self-administered Wa region, where visitors require a permit, is home to the 30,000-strong United Wa State Army, who hold sway over the area on the northeast border with China that is believed to be awash with drugs.
"We have invited 12 ethnic armed groups to attend the meeting," U Aung Myint, a spokesman for the United Wa State Army (UWSA), told AFP, without saying which groups they have invited.
The three-day meeting is due to start on May 1, just over a month after President U Thein Sein secured a draft deal with 16 rebel groups to end decades of fighting.
The government wants a full nationwide ceasefire before elections in November seen as a test of reforms after decades of military rule.
Observers say the Wa meeting is a sign of creeping progress after the draft ceasefire deal in late March, which the United Nations described as an "historic and significant achievement".
Apart from the umbrella deal agreed a month ago, Myanmar's government has reached individual ceasefires with 14 of the 16 major armed ethnic groups but there has been no binding nationwide deal.
The UWSA signed a ceasefire with the country's military government back in 1989 and reiterated the deal with Thein Sein's quasi-civilian government in 2011.
But agreement has so far proved elusive with the Ta'ang National Liberation Army in Shan state, which is fighting alongside ethnic Chinese rebels in the state's Kokang region, as well as with the Kachin Independence Army in the north.
Fighting continues to rage between the army and rebels in Kokang, who poured back into Myanmar in February after being driven out by troops in 2009. The Kokang rebels are not directly involved in the peace talks.
The main reason for the invitation to the talks in Wa "is to work out a solution for peace through discussion", U Khun Myint Tun, chairman of the Pa-O National Liberation Organisation who will attend the meeting, told AFP.
The date for the signing of a nationwide ceasefire accord has not been set but the government is hoping to trumpet a deal before the election campaign season begins.
© AFP