Myanmar Govt Signs Trust-Building Pact with Wa Rebels

Soldiers from the United Wa State Army ride in a vehicle in a street in city of Namteuk near the Chinese border. (Photo: Reuters)

RANGOON — Burma’s government has signed an agreement with a major ethnic rebel group to build mutual trust in an effort to defuse recent tensions between the armies from the two sides, state-run media reported Saturday.

The Kyemon daily said the five-point agreement signed Friday between a government peace delegation and the ethnic Wa rebel group includes clauses calling for prompt meetings between the two armies whenever military issues arise and committing the rebel United Wa State Army (UWSA) not to secede.

The government is seeking comprehensive peace agreements with all of the country’s ethnic rebel groups and has reached new ceasefire agreements with many of them, but it continues to have armed confrontations with some of the major ones. Friday’s move represents a step forward in the government’s peace efforts.

For decades, Burma has faced rebellions from several minority groups seeking autonomy. The Wa, in the country’s north, are believed to have the biggest of the ethnic guerrilla armies, with as many as 30,000 men.

Tensions have risen recently in the Wa region after government troops asked the guerrillas last month to abandon some territory it controls. The Wa refused to abandon their positions, and government troops surrounded them.

The Wa, who once served as a major fighting force for the now defunct Burmese Communist Party, reached a peace agreement with Burma’s former military regime in 1989. It allowed the ethnic group to exercise a measure of autonomy in its region and even maintain a powerful armed force.

The UWSA army had been accused by the United States and Thailand of involvement in the illicit drug trade, but the Wa denied the charges and have declared their region an “opium cultivation-free zone†since 2005.

Friday’s agreement also called for cooperation between the government and the UWSA for regional development and drug eradication efforts.