WALAYKEE. Myanmar. Feb 1- The chief of one of the world's oldest guerilla groups, the Karen National Union (KNU). said he would use political means to settle his group's long running war with Myanmar's military government, reports Reuters.

The change of policy is that from now on we will focus on resolring the problem by political means." Ba Thein told Reuters late on Monday at a safehouse along the Thal-Myanmar border.

"From the beginning we have always said this is a political problem and we should resolve it by political means... not use amis to settle it.” he said. Because by using arms to settle the problem we will never have a stable peace."

Ba Thein said resolving problems with Yangon by political means would take time.

Most senior KNU officials interviewed at a KNU jungle base inside Myanmar, however, said on Monday that they expected a deal to be struck with Yangon sooner rather than later.

Myanmar has not responded yet to the KNLTs change of tack.

Ba Thein. 63. was speaking a week after he toppled KNU founder General Bo Mya. 73. as president of the rebel group.

Bo Mya. who steered the group on a militaristic path for 25 years, was made rice presi-dent in charge of the KNU s military.

He told a ceremony to mark KNU's 51st anniversary that its military policy would change with the leadership change and it would reduce its role to one purely of self defence.

Since 1990. at least 16 ethnic minority rebel groups have entered into ceasefire agreements with Yangon government, leaving ihe KNU as the main group yet to reach a deal.