Rebel negotiators applauded talks with Myanmar authorities Saturday at the end of five days of discussions, but said the real business of crafting peace rests with Aung San Suu Kyi's government-in-waiting.
The delicate negotiations to end long-running wars between Myanmar's patchwork of ethnic minorities and the state have been steered by the current quasi-civilian government, which replaced a military junta in 2011. But the difficult task of implementing the peace process will be handed over to the new government, led by Suu Kyi's National League of Democracy (NLD) party, which will take office later this year after sweeping historic elections last November.
"This peace talk was like a foundation for upcoming peace conferences," said Colonel Khun Okkar, the of the head Pa-O National Liberation Organisation (PNLO), an ethnic rebel group in Myanmar's Shan State. "The next government will lead the real peace talk," he said.
Representatives from armed ethnic factions, the government and army, agreed this week to conclude the peace process within the next five years, said Aung Min, a government minister who facilitated the meetings. Ahead of November's elections, analysts predicted that Suu Kyi, 70, would struggle to win support among minority voters because of her ethnic Bamar heritage. But her party scooped up a vast majority of elected seats across the country, even beating out some ethnic parties on their home turf in the frontier regions.
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