In order to take part in this collective agreement the armed groups had to have previously signed a bilateral ceasefire with the government.
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President Thein Sein had earlier said these groups will be able to enter a ceasefire after elections scheduled for next month.
Thein Sein inked the agreement in the remote capital Naypyidaw in a televised signing ceremony attended by the army chief and rebel representatives in ethnic dress.
“This is our heritage”.
Thein Sein said he would continue with efforts to convince other groups to join the ceasefire later. “The road to future peace in Myanmar is now open”.
But yesterday the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the largest and oldest of the eight groups to sign today, released a pre-emptive statement calling on the government to withdraw a few of its military camps on the frontlines of KNLA territories, although the pact does not clearly provide for such a pullback.
These include the Karen Nation Union, whose armed wing battled government forces in Myanmar’s east from 1949 in one of the world’s longest civil wars.
“The NCA is a new page in history and a product of fearless and energetic negotiations”, Saw Mutu Say Poe, the chairman of the KNU, said at the ceremony. A joint ceasefire monitoring committee is also to be formed.
Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi did not attend the ceremony.
Also missing is the Kachin Independence Organization, which controls vast areas of Kachin State, in Myanmar’s northeast.
The ceasefire, however, is limited, as not all the rebel groups, including the major Kachin Independence Army and the United Wa State Army, signed it.
A nationwide peace deal would have represented a signature achievement for Thein Sein, a former general whose nominally civilian government came to power in 2011 following almost five decades of military rule.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been engaged in armed conflict with various groups seeking greater autonomy since independence from the British in 1948. China has denied these allegations.
Most of the groups signing the agreement are from the Karen region adjoining Thailand, for long a stronghold of narcotics-linked insurgents.
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“It can’t be considered a nationwide cease-fire agreement but it is the start of a process that might actually lead to all the ethnic groups signing the cease-fire agreement”, Larry Jagan, a specialist on Myanmar and freelance journalist, told The Associated Press. The removals could be a crucial step to the groups joining the political mainstream.
