Myanmar leader begins peace talks with ethnic militia groups

By GRANT PECK
Associated Press

BANGKOK (AP) — The head of Myanmar’s military government has held the first in a monthlong series of person-to-person peace talks he has initiated with the country’s historically restive ethnic minority groups. State television reported that Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing held discussions Friday with Yawd Serk, chairman of the Restoration Council of Shan State and Shan State Army, the political body and its military wing representing the Shan minority. The Shan, the country’s largest ethnic minority group, and other minorities have been seeking greater autonomy from the central government since the country, then named Burma, became independent from Britain in 1948.