By Joshua Carroll
YANGON, Myanmar
Myanmar’s fraught peace process took a tentative step forward Monday as ethnic rebel groups agreed on a draft text for a cease-fire agreement following two years of talks.
Amid reports of fighting elsewhere in the country, 16 rebel groups agreed on the wording to an agreement with the government’s Union Peacemaking Working Committee during a seventh round of talks in Yangon, the nation’s former capital and largest city.
President Thein Sein has pledged to secure a peace deal as part of a package of political and economic reforms that began in 2011, when a semi-civilian government took over from the ruling military junta.
The agreement has yet to be officially signed, but representatives from the Myanmar Peace Centre say they expect a signing in late April. Fighting between ethnic rebels and the Myanmar Army has raged for decades.
Critics have questioned the still-powerful military’s commitment to a peace deal.
Monday’s agreement comes after weeks of intense fighting with Kokang rebels, who are not part of negotiations, near the border with China.
Tens of thousands have been displaced and hundreds have died since government troops first clashed with the Myanmar Nationalities Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) in eastern Shan state Feb 9.
On Friday, a volunteer with the Myanmar Red Cross died after succumbing to injuries he received during an attack on the aid group’s convoy last month, local media reported.
Moe Kyaw Than, 45, had several bullet wounds in his intestines and suffered blood poisoning, a doctor who helped treat the volunteer told the Irrawaddy website Monday.
Then on Sunday separate clashes erupted between the rebel Arakan Army and government troops along Myanmar’s western border with Bangladesh. The Arakan Army has reportedly been assisting the MNDAA in Kokang.
The rebel group claimed on its Facebook page that it had killed two Myanmar Army soldiers and detained two others, adding that rebels had suffered no casualties.
