Neighbours concern

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa (right) greets Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon, as Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan looks on, in Colombo. The senior Indian officials met Rajapaksa to demand an immediate ceasefire in the civil war.-AP Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa (right) greets Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon, as Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan looks on, in Colombo. The senior Indian officials met Rajapaksa to demand an immediate ceasefire in the civil war.

AS the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) remains cornered in a small strip of sandy beach, international diplomatic efforts led by India have brought about a lull in the fighting. The Sri Lankan government announced on April 27 that it had ordered its military to cease using heavy weapons, artillery and air strikes in the combat zone, where tens of thousands of civilians are trapped. The United Nations estimates that around 50,000 civilians are still trapped in a 10-square-kilometre area and that 100,000 refugees are in urgent need of medical care.

The rising civilian death toll and the calls by the major parties of Tamil Nadu, including the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), to the Indian government to intercede with Sri Lanka prompted the sudden dispatch of National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon to Colombo on April 24. Their main brief was to impress upon the Sri Lankan government the need to immediately adopt a more humanitarian approach to the crisis facing the Tamil population in the north-east of the island.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also called for a cessation in the fighting so that aid workers could reach the conflict zone. U.N. Security Council President Claude Heller, speaking on behalf of all 15 members of the body, demanded that the LTTE immediately lay down arms, renounce terrorism, allow a U.N.-assisted evacuation of the remaining civilians in the conflict area and join the political process.

U.N. agencies have concluded that if fighting continues and if the LTTE does not allow the people to leave the conflict zone, the number of casualties, especially among children, will increase dramatically in the coming days. The agencies estimate that around 6,500 civilians have been killed and another 14,000 wounded in the Sri Lanka Armys offensive. The U.N. sent John Holmes, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, to Sri Lanka in the last week of April.

The European Union (E.U.), which is becoming increasingly critical of the Sri Lankan militarys continued offensive, has also sent its top officials to Colombo to convince the Sri Lankan government to agree to a ceasefire. The United States has called on the Sri Lankan government to offer an amnesty to most LTTE fighters and open the way for a political dialogue.

By early 2009, the U.S. and many European countries had written the LTTE off as a military force. It is effectively finished except as a guerilla outfit, wrote Robert Rotberg, a Harvard University expert on intrastate conflict. He, however, stated that the guerilla war could continue if Velupillai Prabakaran, the Tiger chief, escaped the Sri Lanka Armys net.

The E.U. has signalled to the Rajapaksa brothers Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President, and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Defence Secretary that the collateral damage being inflicted on the Tamil populace is no longer acceptable. In 1997, the U.S. placed the LTTE on the terror list and most European countries followed suit. For the past three years, the international community has tacitly supported Mahinda Rajapaksas abrogation of the 2002 ceasefire and the military operations that followed. The Sri Lankan government had characterised the fight against the LTTE as its own war against terror.

The Sri Lankan government, in a show of displeasure at the increased European diplomatic activity in recent weeks, went to the extent of denying a visa to Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who was to be part of an observer mission of E.U. Foreign Ministers. The U.S., the E.U., Norway and Japan are responsible for overseeing the Sri Lankan peace process, which was started with great fanfare in 2002. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who was part of the E.U. observer mission, told reporters in Colombo that they wanted an immediate end to the fighting. The international community has been asking for a ceasefire, not to save Prabakaran but to allow civilians to leave and for long-term peace in Sri Lanka, said Miliband.

The Indian government, which has come in for considerable criticism from many regional parties in Tamil Nadu, says it has got an assurance from Sri Lanka that the Tamil population on the island would be reintegrated fully into the national mainstream once the hostilities ceased. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, in a statement in the last week of April, said that India remained concerned about the fate of the civilians trapped in the conflict zone and that the government was in constant contact with the Sri Lankan government. The Sri Lankan President was planning to send Basil Rajapaksa, his brother and close adviser, to India in early May to apprise the government of the steps taken to address Indian concerns.

Home Minister P. Chidambaram told the media that he considered the Sri Lankan government more at fault for preferring the military option rather than negotiations to resolve the Tamil issue. Chidambaram is facing the electorate in Tamil Nadu, where Sri Lankan issue has become an emotive one. Chidambaram had also made the allegation that China was trying to gain diplomatically at Indias expense in Sri Lanka. He told a national daily that China was fishing in troubled waters.

Chidambaram described China as a lone, discordant voice among all of the global community. India considers Sri Lanka to be within its zone of influence. Hu Shicheng, an expert at the China Institute of Contemporary Studies, told a Chinese newspaper that the criticism was groundless. He said that the interests of the two countries overlap in South Asia, and it was in the mutual interest of both Beijing and New Delhi to promote peace in Sri Lanka.

China and Pakistan have been supplying military hardware and giving training to the Sri Lanka Army. China is also helping Sri Lanka build a modern port in Hambantota. The Indian media have reported that the two senior Indian government emissaries who were recently in Colombo conveyed their misgivings about the continued sourcing of arms and munitions from China and Pakistan by the Sri Lankan government. During the discussions with the Rajapaksa brothers on mutual concerns, the Indian delegation, according to reports, promised Sri Lanka assistance in the areas of military supplies, intelligence and training.

New Delhis top priority is to ensure that immediate relief is provided to the civilian population displaced by the long-running conflict. India also wants the Sri Lankan government to accelerate the process of rehabilitating the huge number of displaced people. The Indian External Affairs Ministry issued a statement calling the cessation of hostilities an important step. The statement said that urgent steps were needed to ameliorate the situation of those who had come out of the conflict zone. Every measure must be taken to protect them and guarantee their welfare, the statement said.

India also wants Sri Lanka to implement at the earliest its devolution package for the Tamils promised in the Sri Lankan Constitutions thirteenth Amendment. This amendment was part of the 1987 India-Sri Lanka Agreement. If implemented, it would devolve powers to elected bodies in the Tamil-dominated north and east of the country. New Delhis position on the Tamil question has been clear and consistent since the late 1980s. It is against a separate state for the Tamils but at the same time wants a genuine devolution of powers to the Tamil-majority areas. New Delhi is trying to ensure that Tamils are given their legitimate political rights. There is a fear that a chauvinistic section of the majority community will want victors justice to prevail in the aftermath of the LTTEs military defeat.

During the visit of the two senior Indian officials, the request for the extradition of Prabakaran, if and when he was captured, was formally renewed. New Delhi has been demanding that the rebel leader stand trial in India for his role in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Senior Sri Lankan officials themselves are not too confident of ever catching the elusive Tamil leader alive.

The Indian government has announced a Rs.100-crore emergency relief package, including food packets for 90,000 families, for the displaced people in the war zone. New Delhi has announced that it is planning to send a de-mining team to the north of the country once the conflict winds down. A temporary, 100-bed hospital manned by Indian medical personnel will be set up inside Sri Lanka to treat the civilian casualties of the war.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau has welcomed the Sri Lankan governments decision to halt combat operations. A CPI(M) statement said that the move should pave the way for the rescue of the civilians trapped by the fighting. The party also asked the LTTE to facilitate the safe passage of civilians and not to detain them by force. The Communist Party of India, on the other hand, has been critical of the Indian governments handling of the Sri Lankan crisis. The Bharatiya Janata Party, in a statement, said that the Indian government should retain the option of imposing sanctions on Sri Lanka and withdrawing the Indian High Commissioner from Colombo if the killing of innocent civilians continued.

None of the major national parties, however, supported All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) leader J. Jayalalithaas call for a separate Eelam (homeland) for the Tamil minority.