CALCUTTA, 25 October 2004 — Separatist National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN)’s leaders have accepted an invitation to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi next month for peace talks.
Yesterday’s announcement followed two days of secret parleys between the rebels and K. Padmanabhaiah, former home secretary and federal government’s chief interlocutor in talks with the NSCN, in the Thai capital, Bangkok. Dates and the agenda for Manmohan’s talks with NSCN’s top leaders Isak Chishi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah are being finalized, a senior Home Ministry official told Arab News. A joint statement issued by the rebels and Padmanabhaiah said that the prime minister’s invitation would give a new push to the peace process in the remote northeastern region bordering China and Myanmar. “It (the invitation) shows that the Indian government is committed to finding an early and mutually satisfactory solution to the Naga issue”, the statement said.
A senior NSCN leader said Swu and Muivah will head for Nagaland after meeting Manmohan to spend Christmas and New Year with their followers there.
Significantly, the joint statement strongly condemned the Oct. 2 bomb blasts in Nagaland’s commercial hub, Dimapur, as “barbaric and inhuman”.
Officials say that the objective of the explosions which killed 23 and wounded dozens on Mahatma Gandhi’s 135th birth anniversary was to derail the Naga peace talks.
A meeting between Manmohan and NSCN leaders during the Indian premier’s trip to Bangkok in July was canceled at the eleventh hour for reasons which are yet to be disclosed. The armed rebellion for an independent country in predominantly Christian Nagaland is India’s oldest and one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies.
