India and Naga rebels set for peace talks

An Indian rickshaw puller waits for customers in front of a Congress Party billboard in Dimapur district of Nagaland in 2009. The Indian government will hold talks with Nagaland separatists to strike a peace deal, a rebel Naga leader said on Sunday. (AFP/File)

NEW DELHI (AFP) – The Indian government will hold talks with Nagaland separatists to strike a peace deal, a rebel Naga leader said on Sunday.

Leaders of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-IM), which is fighting for the expansion of the mountainous Nagaland state in India’s remote northeast into a “Greater Nagaland”, arrived in the Indian capital on Saturday from self-imposed exile in The Netherlands.

Guerrilla leaders Isak Chishi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah said they were invited by the Indian government to hold talks and were optimistic that several key demands would be accepted.

“It is a pretty long time that we have been talking to the government of India. In more than 10 years, they could not solve the problem so they are responsible for that,” said Thuingaleng Muivah.

The rebel group’s demand for a “Greater Nagaland” that would unite 1.2 million Nagas has been strongly opposed by the surrounding neighbouring states of Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. Muivah said the group would not withdraw the demand.

“No, sovereignty cannot be withdrawn because sovereignty is with the people… We have been told that the government of India has arranged some counter-proposals from their side. I don’t know how far that is practicable or acceptable to us,” he said.

Meanwhile, India’s Home Secretary G. K. Pillai on Saturday said demands for sovereignty or integration of Naga rebel groups were not feasible.

New Delhi and the rebels entered into a ceasefire in August 1997 which was indefinitely extended in 2007 but the separatists have accused the Indian government of using the ceasefire as cover to tighten its grip and of jeopardising a peace process.

India and the rebels of Nagaland state, bordering China and Myanmar, have held at least 50 rounds of peace talks in over a decade to end one of South Asia’s longest-running insurgencies.

The dispute has claimed around 25,000 lives since India’s independence from Britain in 1947. — AFP