Rebels deny deal with Myanmar government

Three weeks after a cease-fire between Karen rebels and the Myanmar government was announced, the rebel group says a cease-fire agreement was never signed. Naw Zipporah Sein, the general secretary of the Karen National Union, said the group's delegation that negotiated with the government wasn't authorized to sign the cease-fire and that all that the two sides agreed to was to meet again, The New York Times reported Saturday. "We can't say there's a cease-fire yet," Sein told the Times in an interview. "We still need to discuss the conditions." Reconciliation with armed ethnic groups was a condition the United States and other Western countries put on Myanmar before economic sanctions and other punitive measures could be lifted. Karen National Union officials said they didn't know how opposed the organization's rank and file would be to a cease-fire agreement. "The grassroots are very much concerned that it went too quickly. They thought it was a sellout," said Saw David Tharckabaw, the organization's vice president and head of its foreign affairs unit. "There is a feeling that we have been cheated." The Karen rebels must "move more slowly" in dealing with the government in Naypyitaw, Tharckabaw said. The Times said its request for comment from President Thein Sein's office was not answered.