Major Myanmar ethnic rebel group ready for talks

BANGKOK: A major Myanmar ethnic rebel group said on Monday (Nov 25) it was ready for talks with the junta to end more than a year of renewed fighting that has ravaged areas along the China border.
The Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) can call on around 7,000 fighters and has fought the Myanmar military for over a decade for autonomy for the Palaung ethnic minority in northern Shan state.
Last year the TNLA and two other allied rebel groups launched an offensive against the military that has seized swathes of Shan state, including ruby mines and a lucrative trade highway to China.
The military has repeatedly pounded territory it has lost with artillery and air strikes but a promised counter-offensive on the ground is yet to materialise.
“We announce that we are ready to meet and discuss in order to end the military conflict from both sides,” the TNLA said on its Telegram channel.
“In the day-to-day fighting in our Ta’ang region … the local people are suffering badly from the war.”
While it said it was ready for talks, it also added that it would reserve the “right to defend ourselves”.
“We will talk, but we will not give territory,” the TNLA’s General Tar Bhone Kyaw told AFP.
AFP was unable to reach a junta spokesman for comment.
Myanmar’s embattled junta in September made an unprecedented invitation to its enemies to start talks, a bid dismissed at the time by rebel groups.
Analysts say Beijing has pressured the TNLA and its ally the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) to halt their operations against the junta.
China is a major ally and arms supplier of the junta, but also maintains ties with ethnic minority armed groups that hold territory near its border.
It has repeatedly called for fighting to stop in Shan state, a key link in its trillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative.
Last week Beijing said that the head of the MNDAA had come to China for “medical care”, after news reports in Myanmar said he had been arrested on China’s orders
In its statement Monday the TNLA said it “respects and recognises the efforts of the Chinese government to intervene in the border stabilisation and the cessation of hostilities”.
Myanmar is home to around a dozen ethnic armed rebel groups that have battled the military for decades for autonomy and control of lucrative resources including jade, timber and opium.
Some, including the TNLA, have given shelter and training to newer “People’s Defence Forces” that sprung up to battle the military after it seized power in a 2021 coup.