Search the Internet          Tips

Padmanabhaiah hold talks with NSCN(I-M)

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's special emissary K Padmanabhaiah Tuesday held talks with leaders of dominant Naga outfit the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isaac-Muivah) in Bangkok in a bid to salvage the precariously perched cease-fire accord and discuss modalities for extension of the truce beyond Nagaland's borders.

Padmanabhaiah, who flew in from New Delhi, met a two-member team led by NSCN (I-M) general secretary T Muivah at a city hotel. The talks are expected to conclude Wednesday.

The outfit last week announced that they had no moral obligation to honour the truce as the government had not kept it promise to extend the cease-fire coverage area in Naga inhabited areas bordering Nagaland.

Muivah is in Bangkok facing trial on charges of entering Thailand on forged travel documents.

Vajpayee had on May 17 reviewed the situation in Nagaland including the threat by NSCN (I-M) to call off the four-year-old cease-fire if the Centre failed to extend the "area coverage" of the peace process beyond the state's borders despite "repeated positive" assurances by it.

In a statement on May 7, NSCN (I-M) had demanded that "the cease-fire needs to be reviewed in two weeks" and said the matter should be treated "seriously".

The statement had followed the Centre's declaration of cease-fire on April 28 with the Khaplang faction of the NSCN, a rival of the NSCN (I-M).

The yearly cease-fire extension with the NSCN (I-M), which expires on July 31, is also to come up for review in the next few weeks.

Tell us what you think of this report