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Meghalaya : Lapang moots peace talks |
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The much-touted peace process that the Meghalaya government has initiated with the banned Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) appears to be on track, with Chief Minister D.D. Lapang taking a personal interest in launching parleys with leaders of the militant outfit.
For the first time since the move to bring the HNLC to the negotiating table was initiated, Lapang reached out to leaders of the outfit and held a telephonic conversation with them. The Chief Minister is said to have assured the HNLC leaders that the government was willing to sit down and talk peace.
Though Lapang refused to disclose his telephonic talks with the HNLC leaders on the proposed peace process, sources said he apprised members of all political parties, who are part of the Congress-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA), about it.
Lapang has told members of the MDA that “the peace process is the ultimate solution” to the insurgency in the Khasi Hills district, which has lingered for over a decade.
At present, the MDA is party to the ceasefire with the Garo Hills-based A’chik National Liberation Council (ANVC). The truce was initiated by the Centre a couple of years ago. The actual peace talks with the ANVC, however, are yet to begin.
The HNLC is in favour of a peace process on the lines of the one that is currently under way with the ANVC in the Garo hills. The HNLC has sent several feelers since last year to Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil through a church elder, Rev. P.B.M. Basiawmoit, expressing its willingness to come overground and talk peace with the government.
Myanmar border to get more posts
More border posts will be opened on the Indo-Myanmar border to facilitate meetings between the armies of the two nations as part of the Centre’s Look East policy.
At present, border post meetings are held at regular intervals at Moreh in Manipur. After the recent meeting in Dimapur, it was decided that the new posts would be opened at Lungwa in Nagaland’s Mon district, Bihang in Churachandpur district of Manipur and at Sapi and Zokawathar in Mizoram. Zokwathar, Moreh and Lungwa are international trade centres.
Though the volume of trade is negligible, both governments are trying to build roads on either side of the international border to facilitate more people-to-people contact.
In January this year, during his visit to Kuala Lumpur for the annual Asean summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the Look East policy is not merely an external economic policy, but a “strategic shift in India’s vision of the world”.
He had also said that it would be a means to reach out to our “neighbours”. Myanmar is the first stop to the rest of Southeast Asia.
The major problem for both countries is narco-terrorism wherein drugs are smuggled through the porous Myanmar border and exchanged for arms and ammunition for the various insurgent outfits in the Northeast.
Last year alone, the Army’s 3 Corps, which looks after Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram, seized drugs “totalling Rs 30 crore to Rs 40 crore in the international market”.
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