"Organizing a national-level political dialogue before the next peace conference will be one of the key issues to discuss during next week’s meeting between the government and the ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) that signed the nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA). The national dialogue began in 2017 but not all the signatories were able to convene. These included the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) because of objections from the Tatmadaw (military) about the location and the Arakan Liberation Party (ALP) in Rakhine State, citing security concerns. The RCSS and ALP were missing from the dialogue in 2017 and 2018 and their input was therefore missing from the process to establish a federation. With the formal peace process stalled, the national political dialogue has been abandoned for nearly two years. Sai Ngern, the head of the EAOs’ negotiation team on the political dialogue framework and a secretary of the RCSS, said every NCA signatory “must be able to organize the national-level political dialogue under a new framework”. “We tentatively plan it to be able to hold talks in late March. It will be on the agenda of the talks with the government on Jan. 28-29,” he told reporters after the 10 NCA signatories’ Peace Process Steering Team (PPST) meeting in Chiang Mai on Saturday..."