NEW DELHI: The head of a powerful Naga rebel group in India’s turbulent northeast threatened on Wednesday to end a seven-year ceasefire if long-running talks with the Indian government make no progress. Thuingaleng Muivah, the general secretary of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN I-M), told Reuters in an interview that Naga tribals would not give up their decades-old demand for an independent homeland.

The tough talk by Muivah signaled that negotiations between the rebels and New Delhi to end the more than 50-year revolt in Christian-dominated Nagaland state had made little headway.

“Yes, that cannot be ruled out,” Muivah said when asked if the NSCN (I-M) would once again take up arms if there was no progress in talks. “If important issues are not solved we will be compelled to take our own decision again and no one can stop it,” he said. “We can come as far as we can come. Beyond that, we will pack up and go back.”

Nagas make up barely three million of India’s billion plus, mainly Hindu population. A ceasefire agreed between NSCN (I-M) and Indian soldiers has held since 1997 in mountainous Nagaland, one of seven Indian states in the region. The revolt killed more than 20,000 people before the truce.

But a peace deal has proved elusive due to New Delhi’s refusal to accept the NSCN (I-M)’s demand to unite all Naga-dominated areas, including districts in neighbouring states, in a “Greater Nagaland”. Muivah and NSCN chairman Isak Chishi Swu, who live in Thailand, began a new round of talks with New Delhi in December. But the two sides have been tightlipped over any progress.

“Both sides are trying to understand each other and are appreciating each other’s difficulties. And we think we are understanding much better than before,” the 69-year-old Muivah said in the lawns of a government bungalow in New Delhi.

A social sciences post-graduate, Muivah joined NSCN in his youth and little is known of his personal life. The group split in the 1980s and the Isak-Muivah (I-M) faction has about 3,000 cadres armed with sophisticated weapons.

The breakaway faction of S.S. Khaplang has 1,500 rebels. Muivah said the Naga grouse arose from the division of Naga areas by British colonial rulers and subsequently India which included Naga-dominated areas in the neighbouring states of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.

Of the estimated three million Nagas, two million live in Nagaland and the rest are scattered over the three states. While NSCN (I-M) insists that these areas be returned to the Nagas, ethnic rebels and tribal groups in the three states have strongly opposed any plan to redraw boundaries.—Reuters