Myanmar leader begins peace talks with ethnic armed groups

BANGKOK, May 21 (AP): The head of Myanmar’s military government on Friday held the first in a month-long series of person-to-person peace talks he has initiated with the country’s historically restive ethnic minority groups, state media reported.

Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing held discussions with Yawd Serk, chairman of the Restoration Council of Shan State and Shan State Army, the political body and its military wing representing the Shan minority from eastern Myanmar, state-run MRTV television reported.

Hlaing’s meetings in the capital, Naypyitaw, with the leaders of the ethnic armed organizations are their first face-to-face peace talks since the military seized power in February last year from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Shan, the country’s largest ethnic minority group, and other minorities have been seeking greater autonomy from the central government since the country, then named Burma, became independent from Britain in 1948.

Myanmar has 21 ethnic armed organizations, 10 of which accepted the invitation to the peace talks, the military council’s spokesperson, Maj Gen. Zaw Min Tun, said at a news conference on Thursday.

But there is skepticism that the talks will do much to advance peacemaking, because none of the groups attending is currently in armed conflict with the government.

The major ethnic minority groups fighting with the army, such as Kachin Independence Army in the north, Karen National Union in the south, the Karenni National Progressive Party in the east and the Chin National Front in the northwest, have spurned the peace talks because the army excluded their allies in the groups formed last year in opposition to its seizure of power.

The opposition National Unity Government and its armed affiliates, called the People’s Defense Forces, have received critical support from ethnic guerrilla groups, including training, weapons and refuge.