"Preamble: Over five decades ago, while our leaders were meeting in Panglong to deliberate the possibility of a future together after the proposed withdrawal of British protection, General Aung San, the Burman leader of the independence struggle in Ministerial Burma arrived. He instead proposed that our separate homelands in the Frontier Areas be joined to Ministerial Burma as equal partners in a new ?Union of Burma? to hasten the process of achieving independence from Britain. On 11 February 1947, he said: The dream of a unified and free Burma has always haunted me ? We who are gathered here tonight are engaged in the pursuit of the same dream.? We have in Burma many indigenous peoples: the Karen, the Kachin, the Shan, the Chin, the Burmans and others? In other countries too there are many indigenous peoples, many ?races.?? Thus ?races? do not have rigid boundaries. Religion is no barrier either, for it is a matter of individual conscience? If we want the nation to prosper, we must pool our resources, manpower, wealth, skills and work together. If we are divided, the Karen, the Shan, the Kachin, the Chin, the Burman, the Mon and the Arakanese, each pulling in a different direction, the Union will be torn, and we will come to grief. Let us unite and work together. Our forefathers agreed and the Panglong Agreement came into being, providing a legal framework within which the different ethnic peoples would cooperate as equals. The Aung San-Attlee Agreement, which paved the way for Burma?s independence, had called for the ?unification of the Frontier Areas and Ministerial Burma with the free consent of those areas.? The Panglong Agreement, therefore, became the basis for the 1947 Union Constitution and the Republic of the Union of Burma gained independence in 1948. We, the representatives of the Arakan, Chin, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Mon and Shan peoples, therefore, in the spirit of Panglong, are putting forward our vision of how our peoples can once again work together voluntarily as equals with the Burmans to rebuild the Republic of the Union of Burma, which has been devastated by five decades of war..."