The Indian government and a frontline Naga rebel group have now been engaged in peace talks for nine years, continuing an attempt to end one of Southasia's longest-running insurgencies. Since the August 1997 ceasefire between New Delhi and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland faction headed by Isak Chishi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah (known as the NSCN-IM), the two sides have held around 50 rounds of negotiations. During talks in a plethora of European, South and Southeast Asian venues, the two sides have discussed the insurgent group's key demand of a separate Naga homeland. While New Delhi has tried to work out a solution within the ambit of the Indian Constitution, the NSCN-IM has pushed for the unification of all Naga-inhabited areas in India's Northeast into a single politico-administrative unit.
Every time the Indian negotiators and guerrilla chieftains met, time would be spent on charges and counter-charges of truce violation before the ceasefire was finally extended. The extension would invariably be for one additional year – except for once, this past January, when the NSCN-IM agreed to only a six-month extension, seeming to indicate looming roadblocks in the peace process. Because of this history, the initial news out of Bangkok on 30 July, that New Delhi and the NSCN-IM had agreed to make the nine-year-old ceasefire irrevocable and 'coterminous' with the peace talks (meaning they would end at the same time), caused a stir among jaded observers. An Indian newspaper reported from Bangkok that the two sides had agreed on a "broad framework", whereby they would jointly "analyse the Indian Constitution to decide which parts of it will apply, not apply or apply with modifications to the Nagas."
When the Bangkok talks ended the following day, however, the truce had been extended, again, by just another year. Nonetheless, Indian leaders were pleased with the very notion of the ceasefire being made coterminous with the peace talks having been introduced. Oscar Fernandes, Manmohan Singh's chief appointee on the negotiations, explained after the meeting that, "Such a suggestion of the truce being coterminous with the peace talks had come from the Nagas themselves. They have now withdrawn that offer, but a one-year extension is fine with us." Some senior NSCN-IM leaders appeared to have convinced General Secretary Muivah not to go for the long ceasefire; but where the suggestion had originated in the first place, and that it found favour with both Muivah and New Delhi, was what was significant.
Kreddha connection