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Syed Zarir Hussain in Guwahati
A powerful faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim has accused the rival group led by Isak Chishi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah of striking a secret deal with the Indian government on the extension of their four-year-old ceasefire.
The NSCN-IM has "failed to keep the political promises made to their supporters by striking secret deals with the Indian government", K Mulatonu, publicity chief of the faction headed by S S Khaplang, said.
The NSCN-IM leaders had "actually given the nod to New Delhi for revocation of the ceasefire extension issue and now, under pressure from supporters, they are saying something else", Mulatonu told the Indo-Asian News Service on telephone from Zunheboto in eastern Nagaland.
The NSCN-IM entered into a ceasefire with New Delhi on August 1, 1997, following several rounds of peace talks. The NSCN-K has been operating a truce with the government since April 28 this year.
The two factions had split in 1988 over territorial supremacy though both groups are fighting for an independent homeland for the Naga tribes.
The truce with the NSCN-IM has been threatened by a bitter dispute over the government's U-turn on an initial pledge to extend the ceasefire outside Nagaland to all Naga-inhabited areas in the Northeast.
According to NSCN-IM leader A Z Jami, after the collapse on Monday of the latest round of talks in Amsterdam, another meeting is scheduled to be held next week to save the ceasefire.
The NSCN-IM top leadership, now camping in Amsterdam, is, however, keeping quiet about the outcome of the peace talks, even as the outfit's local leaders in Nagaland are threatening to go underground once again.
"The NSCN leadership's failure to explain what transpired at the Amsterdam meeting with the Indian government's negotiator [former Union home secretary K Padmanabhaiah] has divided and confused their supporters who are now totally demoralized," Mulatonu said. "There is total confusion in their rank and file."
A June 14 agreement by New Delhi extending a ceasefire pact with the NSCN to all Naga-inhabited areas triggered violent protests in the neighbouring states of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
The people in the three states that have sizeable Naga populations feared that the government was planning to carve slices of their territory to create a Greater Nagaland.
But with the government backtracking on the June agreement, fresh bouts of protests have begun -- this time by the Naga community.
Indo-Asian News Service
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