The Myanmar government reportedly has stopped military operations against rebel fighters in the northern Kachin state near the Chinese border.

Former military junta leader and now civilian Myanmar President Thein Sein told the army to shoot only in self-defense against the rebel Kachin Independence Army, the BBC said, although it didn't name the source of the report.

The pull back comes after intense fighting last week in remote Kachin countryside in which the KIA claimed to have killed up to 60 Myanmar regular soldiers.

A report by Kachin News Group, operating out of Thailand and run by self-exiled Kachins, said dozens of Myanmar soldiers were killed last week and a large number injured when a series of land mines were denoted remotely in an area the government army recently captured near the Chinese border.

A KIA officer, who participated in the attack, told the Kachin News Group that 30 large land mines were planted at the KIA's base just before they abandoned it. Government soldiers moved in and the rebels detonated the mines, he said.

The KNG report said observers estimate that fighting in the Waingmaw Township area has forced more than 4,500 civilians to take refuge behind Kachin army lines.

If the Myanmar army ceases operations, there could be a breathing space to re-establish a cease-fire with the Kachin Independence Organization similar to one that collapsed in June.

Fighting broke out June 9 near Bhamo, around 40 miles from the Chinese border. The clashes, in which several rebels and soldiers died, marked the end an uneasy 15-year cease-fire between the KIA and the Myanmar central government.

The government blamed the escalation in fighting on the KIA, a report in the state-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar said at the time. KIA troops entered the Tarpein hydroelectric dam, a joint China and Myanmar project, and seized ammunition from security guards.

However, the KIA said the fighting was a result of the breakdown of talks aimed at having KIA members join the central government's Border Guard Force, made up mainly of former rebel forces. The KIA refuses to join the BGF.

The government's policy of maintaining the BGF has been a relatively successful tactic between it and insurgents in several sensitive border areas, mainly in Kachin, in Shan state directly to the south and in Karen state, further south and which borders Thailand.

Despite ruling Myanmar, formerly called Burma, for most of the years since independence from the British in 1948, the military has had uneasy relations with the country's ethnic peoples along its borders.

Clashes with ethnic rebels in the states of Kachin, Karen and Shan states is a sensitive issue particularly now for the nominally civilian government -- former junta leaders -- as it attempts to show the outside world it is moving toward a democratic form of government.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on a recent visit to Myanmar that an end to ethnic fighting is essential for normal relations with the United States.

While the fighting may stop through another cease-fire, there remains the issue of thousands of displaced people, the International Crisis Group has said. That, as well as ethnic discrimination, rural poverty and giving the local population a greater share of rewards from exploitation of the regions' natural resources have to be addressed.

The problem of tens of thousands of displaced people has to be addressed if more fighting and all-out civil war is to be avoided, said Lynn Yoshikawa of Refugees International, a group in the United States.

"Tensions between the government and Kachin Independence Organization have reached boiling point," said Yoshikawa in a report by the Irrawaddy, a south Asian news group in Thailand.

"Most of the displaced people don't want to flee and generally wait until the last minute to leave their homes," said Yoshikawa, who recently visited Myanmar.

Yoshikawa said she was "pleasantly surprised" when Sein suspended construction of the environmentally controversial Chinese-backed Myitsone hydro dam in Kachin State in September.

But "the impact of the suspension has been diluted" by the army's continuing offensive against the rebels.