Meghalaya government on Friday asked the proscribed Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) to reconsider its decision to pull out of the tripartite peace talks with the Centre and State governments.
Asking the HNLC to re-think, to Revisit, the Deputy Chief Minister said, “Golden opportunity may happen once or twice but it will not happen every now and then. So my humble request to the leaders of the HNLC is to rethink and revisit the decision that you have taken and communicated to the government.”
“I (also) want to request its top leaders that if they are afraid that they might get arrested, I urge them to choose a location, we (government) are ready to meet you there and discuss because we want to ensure the peace talks are successful and come to a positive conclusion,” he said.
Tynsong also clarified the reason behind the government’s request to hold talks with top leaders of the outfit. He said, “Since the authorized people of the HNLC cannot take any decision (during the talks held with the government), we insist that meeting be held with top leaders, who can take decision (on several issues) because we want the talks to have a logical conclusion. Therefore, the top leaders should come forward (to the negotiating table).”
He said that the HNLC’s decision to withdraw from the peace talks came as a shock to the government.
On the HNLC’s demand for general amnesty, Tynsong said that in fact that during the first round of peace talks, the government interlocutor and MHA advisor had already requested the outfit to submit a list of its cadres, who have got pending cases in different courts so that the government can workout on what is to be done. According to him, the HNLC never furnished the names of its cadres and the pending cases against them.
“We have asked for details but they did not furnish that so ultimately we keep waiting and instead we received a letter that they don’t want to continue with the peace talks anymore because of this. In fact this issue has already been discussed in the first meeting itself. That is why the authorized representatives of the HNLC also went back to Bangladesh to discuss with their top leaders about the issues, what was the discussion, what was the justification and offer made by the government to their top leaders,” he said.