Source: The Sangai Express
New Delhi, February 02:
The Centre will initiate a fresh round of talks with the top leadership of insurgent group NSCN (I-M) here from tomorrow to take forward the peace process in Nagaland.
While the Central team would be led by Home Minister Shivraj Patil, the NSCN (I-M) delegation will include its Chairman Isaak Chisi Swu and General Secretary Th Muivah, official sources said tonight.
"The talks will be held at political level," the sources said, maintaining Patil would be assisted by a group of Ministers comprising Oscar Fernandes, Prithviraj Chauhan and S Regupathy besides Centre�s representative for the Naga peace process K Padmanabhaiah and other top officials.
Patil, who addressed a press conference here this evening on returning from a four-day visit to Assam, Tripura and Mizoram, declined to go into details with regard to the agenda for the talks with NSCN (I-M).
"Don�t create problems for the talks," Patil shot back when asked about the reported demand of Naga leaders for unification of Naga-dominated areas in the North East.
This is the second time that Swu and Muivah have come to India to hold talks with the Central Government.
After three decades in exile, they had held parleys with the Vajpayee Government two years back.
Muivah has said both sides could come closer and an honourable solution could be found to the Naga problem if the Government moved forward beyond recognising the uniqueness of their history.
"We are not demanding anything from you (Government).
We will respect India so long as the Nagas are respected," he had said.
Swu and Muivah had come here over two months back and then gone to Nagaland where they held consultations with a cross-section of people for their next round of talks with the Centre for finding a solution to the vexed Naga political problem.
They returned here last Saturday.
The senior NSCN (IM) leaders, who have been in India at the invitation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, were given what the leaders call a �mandate� by a two-day Naga people�s consultative meet on the on-going peace process at the organisation�s headquarters �Camp Hebron�, off Dimapur recently.
The consultative meeting, attended by over 6,000 people representing Naga villages of Nagaland, Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, in a declaration said the protracted conflict must be resolved by NSCN (I-M) and Government of India by peaceful means.
It also asserted that no solution can be found without bringing Naga-inhabited areas of the North-East under a single administrative set-up.




