Manipur government holding peace talks with valley-based insurgent group: CM

IMPHAL: Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh said on Sunday that the state government is holding peace talks with a valley-based insurgent group and that the talks are at an advanced stage. Without mentioning the name of the militant outfit, Biren Singh, at a programme here, said: “We are advancing... and we are expecting to sign a peace accord with one big UG (underground organisation) very shortly.” It will be for the first time ever since the ethnic violence broke out seven months ago on May 3 that a valley-based outfit entered into peace talks with the government.

Top official sources said that the state government has been holding talks with the United National Liberation Front (UNLF), and an accord is expected to be signed with a faction of the outfit. The UNLF faction, led by Kh Pambei, has decided to sign a mutual ceasefire agreement with the Centre and hold talks with the government soon. On the occasion of UNLF’s 59th anniversary at the newly inaugurated camp in the Kakching Khunou area on Saturday, the group’s General Secretary, Ch Thanil, said that the proposed process may be termed “peace talks.”

He said that the move towards a ceasefire and a political settlement was reached after the leadership pondered over “feelers” from New Delhi. On November 13, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) extended a ban on 11 Meitei extremist groups and their associate organisations, including the UNLF, which mostly operate from neighbouring Myanmar and have often carried out fatal attacks on security forces. Manipur has around 400 km of unfenced border with Myanmar.

According to a notification issued by the MHA, the groups that were declared banned for five years under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, were the Peoples’ Liberation Army, generally known as PLA, and its political wing, the Revolutionary Peoples’ Front (RPF), the Peoples’ Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK) and its armed wing, the Red Army, and the Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP) and its armed wing (also called the Red Army). (IANS)

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