YANGON- Chairman of Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) General Yawd Serk, also the acting leader of the Peace Process Steering Team (PPST), arrived in Nay Pyi Taw yesterday by air from Tachileik, Shan State, to attend Joint Implementation Coordination Meeting (JICM).

The PPST was formed with the leaders of ethnic armed groups that are signatory to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA).

A meeting of the PPST will also be held in Nay Pyi Taw today.

The JICM is the highest-level meeting in the peace process and is usually attended by the top leaders and security officials as well as the leaders of the 10 NCA signatories.

“PPST’s meeting will be in Nay Pyi Taw on January 7th. The meeting is to prepare for the JICM which will be held tomorrow,” said Col. Khun Okkar, Patron of Pa-O National Liberation Organization (PNLO).

He also said that the leaders of 10 NCA signatory ethnic armed groups arrived in Nay Pyi Taw to attend the event.

As the NCA has deviated from the path of only a single military, building a democracy and federal Union which would grant full national equality and self-determination rights, the formal meetings concerning the peace processes had been postponed over one years.

The holding of 8th JICM which will be held on January 8th aims to resume the formal meetings concerning the peace processes. Moreover, the facts about the basic principles of Federalism will be discussed during the JICM, says Lt.Col Sai Ngern, RCSS’s spokesperson.

Fourth Anniversary Commemoration of NCA signing was held in Nay Pyi Taw on October 28th but the RCSS’s representatives can’t attend the event because there had been misunderstandings about the RCSS’s trip among government, army and the RCSS.

The RCSS delegation had planned their trip since October 10th with the government’s Peace Commission and informed them that they would travel from their headquarters at Loi Tai Leng overland through Shan State to Taunggyi and Nay Pyi Taw. However, the military [Tatmadaw] blocked the trip by RCSS representatives, citing security concerns and asked them to travel to Nay Pyi Taw by air from Tachileik in eastern Shan State.

Therefore, there had been critics about the misunderstandings among Tatmadaw, government and RCSS.