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India-Pakistan
IndiaÂ’s Naga rebels extend ceasefire by one year
2006-08-01
GUWAHATI, India - A powerful separatist group in India’s northeastern state of Nagaland agreed on Monday to extend a ceasefire with the government by one year and continue with peace talks, a senior rebel leader said. “The ceasefire has been extended by one year,” Phunthing Shimray of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Issac-Muivah) told Reuters by telephone after three days of talks with Indian negotiators in Bangkok.
National socialists?
More than 20,000 people have died in a nearly six-decade struggle for an independent homeland for the mainly the Christian Naga people on IndiaÂ’s far eastern border with Myanmar, but violence has diminished since a ceasefire was agreed in 1997.

In January the rebels extended the truce for only six months, instead of a year, as there was little progress on the central rebel demands -- unification of Naga-dominated areas in northeast India and ultimately independence.

The group, the largest faction of a divided rebel movement, had appeared to harden its stand few days before the latest round of talks, saying that independence was more important than an extension of the truce. Security analysts say peace with the Nagas is crucial for a broader peace in the remote northeast, seven states connected to the rest of India by a thin strip of land and home to dozens of insurgent groups.
Posted by:Steve White

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