The Naga talks move along

The Indian government and a frontline Naga rebel group have now been engaged in peace talks for nine years, continuing an attempt to end one of Southasia's longest-running insurgencies. Since the August 1997 ceasefire between New Delhi and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland faction headed by Isak Chishi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah (known as the NSCN-IM), the two sides have held around 50 rounds of negotiations. During talks in a plethora of European, South and Southeast Asian venues, the two sides have discussed the insurgent group's key demand of a separate Naga homeland. While New Delhi has tried to work out a solution within the ambit of the Indian Constitution, the NSCN-IM has pushed for the unification of all Naga-inhabited areas in India's Northeast into a single politico-administrative unit.

Every time the Indian negotiators and guerrilla chieftains met, time would be spent on charges and counter-charges of truce violation before the ceasefire was finally extended. The extension would invariably be for one additional year – except for once, this past January, when the NSCN-IM agreed to only a six-month extension, seeming to indicate looming roadblocks in the peace process. Because of this history, the initial news out of Bangkok on 30 July, that New Delhi and the NSCN-IM had agreed to make the nine-year-old ceasefire irrevocable and 'coterminous' with the peace talks (meaning they would end at the same time), caused a stir among jaded observers. An Indian newspaper reported from Bangkok that the two sides had agreed on a "broad framework", whereby they would jointly "analyse the Indian Constitution to decide which parts of it will apply, not apply or apply with modifications to the Nagas."