Several political parties in Myanmar said Tuesday that the government appeared to be rushing to conclude a nationwide cease-fire agreement with armed ethnic groups without enabling them to adequately address the key concerns of the groups.

They made the claim after a meeting between government peace negotiators and nearly 150 representatives from 66 of the country’s registered political parties in Yangon Monday on the broader peace process.

Following the meeting, a joint statement was released saying that the political parties called on “all concerned parties to sign the nationwide cease-fire agreement as soon as possible for the sake of long and sustained peace building in Myanmar,” according to local reports.

But Sai Nyunt Lwin of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) told RFA’s Myanmar Service that the government’s Union Peacemaking Working Committee (UPWC) had released the statement without the approval of all of the political parties present.

“When the meeting was almost over, [the UPWC] asked the other parties to agree to the statement which they had already written,” he said.

Aung Min, a minister in President Thein Sein’s office, led the government team in the talks amid reports that it was racing to wrap up the cease-fire deal by next month in a bid to end decades of civil war in the country.

“After the meeting, they put the parties’ names on the statement and told us, ‘We don’t think there would be anyone who wants to reject it.’ Then they released it. When the statement was released, it included all 66 political parties [in attendance], which was incorrect.”

Nyan Win, spokesperson for Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party told RFA that the government-affiliated Myanmar Peace Center (MPC) was not adequately prepared to facilitate dialogue at Monday’s meeting.

“During the meeting, some of the political parties discussed topics that were not included in the meeting agenda,” he said, adding that it was the MPC’s job to keep the discussion on track, with a focus on agenda items.

He said that the NLD had little time to prepare for the meeting because it had “received a late invitation” and was not informed what the topics for discussion would include.

“[In the future] I urge the MPC to submit a proposal, as it is the organization that must select the meeting topics,” he said.

“The MPC didn’t present any proposal, so we didn’t know what to discuss.”

Sai Saw Myint Than, spokesperson for the Nationalities Brotherhood Federation (NBF)—an alliance of 15 ethnic political parties—said that the MPC only informed his group by invitation that the meeting would cover the peace process and the framework for ensuing political dialogue, without providing further details.

“Most political parties couldn’t prepare enough to discuss and some didn’t even know what the framework was,” he said.

Sai Saw Myint Than said that the NBF led a discussion on the framework for political dialogue based on its own “all-inclusive” proposal, which was written to include the government, military, political parties and armed ethnic groups.

“We discussed the timeframe, such as when to begin the political dialogue and how many people from each party should be included at the beginning,” he said, adding that the NBF had also explained the results of its meetings on the issues over the past two years.

The UPWC agreed with ethnic parties at Monday’s meeting to finish drafting a framework for political dialogue within 60 days of signing a cease-fire agreement, with dialogue to begin no more than 30 days after that.