Signatories to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) and the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC), which has been formed with representatives from political parties, began an unofficial meeting in Yangon yesterday, with both sides resolving to deal with the bottlenecks to the stalled official peace talks, state media reported.

The unofficial meeting comes as official meetings of the UPDJC Secretariat have been stalled for nearly a year since July, 2018, though a monthly meeting had been agreed upon.

The two-day meeting is at the National Reconciliation and Peace Centre with 10 representatives from the government, 9 from the group of EAOs, and 10 from the group of political parties in attendance.

U Sai Ngin, Secretary of the RCSS, representative of the group of EAOs, and a member of the UPDJC Secretariat, said ways to resume official peace talks, matters related to the Union Peace Conference-21st Century Panglong, and implementation of previous agreements must be discussed at the unofficial meeting.

An inflexible position on policies at the negotiating table is the main bottleneck in the peace process, said U Sai Ngin. He urged all stakeholders to work towards implementing the basic principles of a federal system and democracy before 2020 as the time is limited for the government to implement the peace process.