AFP, Bangkok

Myanmar’s ruling junta yesterday made a rare call for the armed groups it is fighting to cooperate with it ahead of a slated election, an invitation anti-coup forces swiftly rejected.

The unexpected appeal comes as the junta continues to suffer major battlefield reverses to ethnic minority armed groups and pro-democracy “People’s Defence Forces” (PDF) that rose up to oppose its seizure of power in 2021.

“If the armed groups... choose to legally establish themselves within the framework of the law and cooperate hand in hand with the government... the government will welcome and accept this,” the military said in a statement published by junta media The Global New Light of Myanmar.

The National Unity Government, a body dominated by ousted lawmakers working to reverse the coup, said the junta announcement was “a strategy filled with deception aimed at legitimising their power-consolidating sham election and attempting to divide and weaken” its opponents.

The military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected civilian government in February 2021, triggering mass protests that were met with a brutal crackdown.

Civilians set up PDFs to fight back and ethnic minority armed groups -- many of which have fought the military for decades -- were reinvigorated, plunging the country into civil war.