More of Myanmar’s ethnic minority rebel groups should be brought into peace talks and the effort to end conflict should not divide groups that are involved in negotiations and those that have shunned the process, Aung San Suu Kyi said on Tuesday.
Hundreds of representatives of guerrilla groups, the military and members of parliament, gathered in the capital, Naypyitaw, for the second stage of talks aimed at ending insurgencies that have plagued the country for decades.
The outgoing semi-civilian government of President Thein Sein signed what it called a nationwide ceasefire agreement in October, but seven of 15 rebel groups invited to participate declined to sign, including some of the most powerful.
Other groups were not invited to take part or showed little interest in the process.
Since the signing, fighting has erupted between the military and groups that did not sign the ceasefire and groups that did not take part in the negotiations, as well as between groups that signed and others that did not, further complicating the already daunting task of reaching sustainable peace.
“We need to work for all the ethnic armed groups to be participate in the NCA,” Suu Kyi said referring to the nationwide ceasefire agreement.
“It is important not to have conflicts between the ethnic armed groups which have signed the NCA and the groups which are still not involved in the agreement.”
Ethnic minority guerrillas have been fighting the central government for greater autonomy and rights since shortly after the country gained independence from Britain in 1948.
The military, which still wields huge influence under a constitution it drafted in 2008, has long portrayed itself as the sole power holding the ethnically diverse country together and it is widely seen as loath to give ground on minority demands for autonomy under a federal system.