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Burma assures probe into border killings

Burmese authorities have assured India that they will conduct an inquiry into the killing of three Assam Rifles soldiers on Wednesday night in Mon district of Nagaland, officials said in New Delhi on Friday. Two other soldiers were injured in the incident.

The two countries are in touch at the diplomatic and field levels to seek better co-ordination and ensure such incidents do not recur, they said.

The Burmese authorities said New Delhi would be kept informed of the investigations.

Local army commanders of both sides had a flag meeting at a forward border post close to Lungwa in Mon district on Thursday and decided to maintain regular contact to avoid recurrence of such incidents.

The Burmese commanders had said at the meeting that their border troops had 'mistaken Indian border guards for Naga insurgents as the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang) cadre often don olive green battle fatigues similar to that of Indian formations'.

The commanders, who submitted a written 'unqualified apology', said their troops were combing the Yachung area across Lungwa, reportedly in hot pursuit of NSCN-K militants, when they came across the Assam Rifles border patrol and 'mistakenly' opened fire on them.

According to highly placed defence sources, Mon district is a major infiltration point for the NSCN's Khaplang faction. Recently, the Naga insurgents had killed 10 Burmese soldiers in a major clash in the area, they said.

While the NSCN faction led by Isak Chisi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah has a ceasefire agreement with the Indian Army since 1997, the authorities have spurned similar overtures by the Burma-based Khaplang faction.

A high-level defence delegation led by the then army chief, General V P Malik, had last year visited Rangoon to discuss the possibility of the two armies undertaking co-ordinated operations against the Naga insurgents in their respective areas.

Meanwhile, defence sources said the condition of the two injured soldiers was now stable.

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