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Thailand halts India's peace talks with NSCN

Josy Joseph in New Delhi

In a severe set-back to the peace talks between New Delhi and Naga insurgents, an immigration court in Thailand has sentenced National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muviah faction general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah to a year in prison.

His offences: violating immigration laws and attempting to flee while on bail.

Muivah, the key negotiator for the rebels, faces another trial. For entering Thailand on a fake passport.

The sentence from the special immigration court in Songkhla, South Thailand, has put the Union government in a fix. It was Muviah that New Delhi's key negotiator and former home secretary K Padmanabhaiah had been talking to after the cease-fire in Nagaland .

Reports from Thailand said Muviah has forfeited the 200,000 bahts he deposited as bail. He has been directed to appear before a Bangkok court in the original case wherein he stands accused of entering Thailand on a fake passport.

Muivah had landed in Bangkok on January 19, travelling from Karachi. As per his passport, he was a South Korean by the name Hwan Soochin.

He was granted bail by a local court, but was not supposed to leave the country. He was kept at Hotel Basili near Bangkok International airport, with two security guards for company.

On January 28, he pretended to be ill and went to a hospital. He disappeared from there.

Muivah later appeared at Hatyai, an airport in South Thailand with yet another fake passport. He was nabbed at the airport and produced before the Songkhla court.

Sources said Muivah used a passport supposedly from Singapore, in the name of Sol Siang Hui, the second time.

Muivah close associate I Shimre was also arrested with him.

Sources in the Union home ministry said the unexpected crackdown on Muivah was prompted by an alert from the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. The warning was issued in the run-up to the next month's United Nation Conference on Trade and Development in Thailand, which is expected to be attended by US President Bill Clinton.

Besides, Thailand has been cracking down on the Myanmar rebels, who carried out two hostage operations in that country recently. It is known that NSCN-IM has links with the Myanmar rebels.

With the key negotiator in jail, thus, the peace talks are on the verge of collapse. The NSCN-IM had asked the Union government to reschedule the next round of talks, originally scheduled for January 29 and 30 in Paris. Accordingly, the talks were postponed to February 3 in Bangkok..

This is the third round of talks between the NSCN-IM and the Indian government after the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government came to power.

The cease-fire was declared in August 1997. But there were several issues of dispute, including the area covered under it. New Delhi insists that the cease-fire covers only Nagaland, while the NSCN-IM says it covers all areas where Nagas live in the North-East.

The Centre's decision to appoint Padmanabhiah in place of the original negotiator, Swaraj Kaushal, the husband of BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, had not gone down well with the NSCN.

The cease-fire will end on July 31.

The Indian government faces several other dilemmas. It cannot demand Muivah's extradition as there is no red alert by the Interpol for him. India has never demanded one. And it would be highly embarrassing for the government to demand the extradition of a rebel leader it has been engaging in peace talks.

Muivah, for his part, has acknowledged in a recent interview with The Far Eastern Economic Review that he has organised bank robberies, ambushed Indian army patrols and assassinated his Indian and Naga opponents.

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