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Vajpayee to meet Muivah in Japan?
By Vinay Kumar
NEW DELHI, DEC. 7. During the course of his five-day tour of Japan, the Prime Minister, Mr. A.B. Vajpayee, is likely to accomplish a bit of domestic agenda as well. It is learnt that Mr. Thiungaleng Muivah, general secretary, National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN Issac-Muivah) is scheduled to call on Mr. Vajpayee during the Prime Minister's two-day stay in Osaka. It is learnt that the Centre's interlocutor on the Naga ceasefire, Mr. K. Padmanabhaiah, and the Director, Intelligence Bureau, Mr. K.P. Singh, have left a day earlier for Osaka in order to be present during the Vajpayee-Muivah meeting.
The idea of organising this interaction outside India is to convey to the NSCN(I-M) the Centre's continued seriousness in taking the ``Naga peace process'' to the next logical step.
Depending on the nature of interaction between the Prime Minister and the NSCN leader, the Indian officials - Mr. Singh and Mr. Padmanabhaiah - could fly out to Bangkok, where the discussion with the rest of the NSCN leadership be carried forward, highly placed sources in the Government indicated today.
It would be Mr. Vajpayee's second meeting with Mr. Muivah. He had an interaction with the NSCN(I-M) leadership during his visit to Paris in September 1998. The NSCN leadership had always wanted an interaction with the highest level in the Government. The then Prime Minister, Mr. Deve Gowda, had also met the NSCN leadership during his visit to Zurich. The four-year-old ceasefire agreement with the NSCN has hit some rough patches in the recent past when the Centre had extended the ceasefire beyond Nagaland. Though the decision found favour with the NSCN(I-M), it sparked violent protests in the neighbouring Manipur forcing the Centre to take a `u-turn' and withdraw the ceasefire beyond Nagaland.
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