The Hindu : NSCN leaders may get passports to return home

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 01, 2002

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NSCN leaders may get passports to return home

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI NOV. 30. After lifting the ban on the secessionist Naga outfit, the NSCN (I-M), the Government is believed to have decided to give passports to the outfit's leaders to facilitate their travel to India sometime in mid-December.

Talks between the Centre and the NSCN (I-M) leadership are likely to begin around Christmas for the first time on Indian soil.

Till now, the Centre's emissary, K. Padmanabhaiah, had held talks with the NSCN (I-M) leadership either in Thailand, the Netherlands or in Italy. And the NSCN top brass, mainly based in Bangkok for the last several years, had met the Prime Minister a couple of times in Paris and Tokyo.

Observers here say that the longest surviving insurgency in theNorth-Eastern region may turn out to be a tricky affair to handle but credit the Government and the Naga militants with having stuck to the ceasefire agreement since 1997 which is believed to have helped in creating conditions on the ground conducive towards building an atmosphere of mutual trust and understanding.

While T. Muivah, the General Secretary of the NSCN(I-M), is in possession of an Indian passport, the outfit's president, Issac Swu, is likely to be given one soon by the Government to enable him to travel to the country in the third week of December.

Three others of the NSCN (I-M), R.S. Reising, Imcha Longkumer and Railing Zimi, would also be given passports, highly placed government sources said.

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