Preparing for talks

The two sides are preparing to talk, but the political resolution of the conflict still appears to be elusive.

HAD Velupillai Prabakaran been allowed to write the entire script, it may have read differently. For instance, the Sri Lankan government would have responded at once to the unilateral ceasefire announced by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an d had it shown a reluctance to do so, the international community would have rapped it on the knuckles and forced it to do so. Of course, Britain's new anti-terrorist law would not have got past Parliament.

As it happened, the LTTE leader wrote only a part of the script, and though he tried to dictate the rest, the problem was that there were too many other actors with minds of their own. Colombo ignored the ceasefire, not just when it was initially declare d for one month on December 24, but at each extension thereafter.

After some initial remarks by the junior British Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain asking Sri Lanka to reciprocate the truce, the international community looked the other way as the security forces launched one military offensive after another in Jaffna Peninsula.

As for the U.K.'s Terrorism Act, 2000, the LTTE did not get outlawed under it when it came into effect on February 19 as the Sri Lankan government would have liked. Instead, acting more subtly, the British decided to put off indefinitely the announcement of a list of organisations that would be proscribed under the new law, thereby keeping the noose hanging over the LTTE's head.

Beginning with the meeting between the Norwegian peace envoy Erik Solheim and Prabakaran on November 1, 2000, the LTTE leader has projected himself as a messiah of peace. First he called for talks, then declared a truce, and seemingly turned the other ch eek as the security forces re-established themselves in Jaffna peninsula. Whether or not this is really a new Prabakaran, no one knows for sure. But at every step he seems to have moved closer to the negotiating table, even though the government stood aw ay. Now a stage has come when it is almost impossible for him to back off from the process.

In regard to the Norwegian initiative, the LTTE raised the stakes in mid-February, when Anton Balasingham, who has emerged as the LTTE's pointman, virtually threatened to pull out of the process should the U.K. ban the group under the Terrorism Act. Now that the British have put off the decision, the LTTE has little choice but to stay in the process. It is now fairly certain that peace talks will be held. Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar has said that negotiations are "likely to commence in a few mo nths time". But he added an all-important rider: "if all goes well".

Norway is said to be finalising a so-called memorandum of understanding which envisages certain "goodwill gestures" by both sides before the start of any talks. There is no official word about this "MoU", but reports in the Sri Lankan press have suggeste d that on the LTTE's side it includes a commitment not to attack any civilian targets - which mainly means no bombings or assassinations. The government, for its part, will send more food supplies to the LTTE-held areas in the north, and perhaps certain other items that have so far been embargoed, in order to address the LTTE demand for "normalisation" of civilian life in those areas.

The MoU also provides for an international committee to monitor the "goodwill gestures", and the composition of the committee is still being finalised. So far the government has held firm on its position that there will be no ceasefire from its side ahea d of talks. Both President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Kadirgamar have said that a ceasefire will become a possibility only after the start of negotiations and then, depending on the "satisfactory progress" of the talks. As if to drive home the point, the military launched a series of operations in December and early January, facing virtually no resistance from the LTTE. It thus re-established control over most of Jaffna Peninsula. Now the LTTE controls Elephant Pass, and Palai, its forward defence positi on for the Pass.

On February 22, the LTTE extended for another month its unilateral ceasefire, due to end on February 24. While doing this, it reiterated its demand that the government reciprocate the gesture, and urged the international community to use its "good office s" to persuade Sri Lanka to do so. But it seems that the Tigers may finally accept the government position on this.

While it has taken nearly three years for the Norwegians to get to the current stage of the process, the pre-talks phase of getting the two sides together, which seemed impossible at one time, may actually turn out to have been the easy part. The two sid es are preparing to talk, but there still seems to be no meeting ground on the "core issue", which according to the government is the political resolution of the conflict, and which should form the main substance of the negotiations.

In her address to the nation on February 4, Sri Lanka's Independence anniversary, Kumaratunga declared that the new Constitution drafted by her government, which it tried to put through Parliament last year, would form the bedrock of a political solution to the aspirations of the Tamil people. The LTTE shot back that it had to be the Thimphu principles. Balasingham said from his base in London that no solution would be acceptable to the Tigers unless it was based on the principles of the right to self-d etermination, the recognition of Tamils as a distinct nation, and of their right to a historically deemed homeland.

Let alone presenting it to the LTTE, the government has yet to build a Sinhala consensus on its draft Constitution. It was still-born in Parliament last year precisely because of the absence of such a consensus, and it is unlikely that there will be one now. So far the rift between the ruling People's Alliance (P.A.) coalition and the Opposition United National Party (UNP) seems only to be growing. The UNP complained recently that it was not being kept informed by the government of the developments in t he peace process, and that the little it knew was thanks to Solheim, who has made it a point to meet Opposition leader Ranil Wickremasinghe each time he is in Colombo.

If the government wants to negotiate a political settlement with the LTTE that will not be opposed by the Sinhalese majority, it is imperative for it to take the UNP along. That is the only way the real hardliners in the majority community, represented b y the Buddhist monks, the Sihala Urumaya and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, can be silenced. But such a bridge-building exercise is not on yet.

THERE are many more uncertainties. One of them is the Indian position on the peace talks. As Kumaratunga left in late February for a short visit to New Delhi, the question in Sri Lanka was whether India would countenance the legitimising of the LTTE, whi ch seems to be the inevitable consequence of the peace talks. In fact, in the current process, like it or not, the LTTE has seemingly emerged as the primary and main representative of the Tamil people.

It seems that India did not expect the Norwegian initiative to come this far, to the point where the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE are on the verge of talking to each other. New Delhi was in all probability surprised at the November 2000 Solheim-Pra bakaran meeting that set in motion the chain of events up till now.

Kadirgamar told Frontline that the LTTE was being accorded primacy in the talks because the immediate priority was to end the war. "For that purpose we have to bring to the table those with guns in their hands," he said. But, he added, when it com es to working out a durable political solution, there may well be other political parties to be involved.

But where are the other Tamil parties? Except for the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP) and the Varatharaja Perumal faction of the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), the others, including the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), have more or less signed away to the LTTE whatever remained of their claims to leadership, and seemed to have accepted the moral and political authority of the group as the chief negotiator on behalf of the Tamil people. Whether India can live with this fast-emerging reality is one of the many questions that will finally decide the shape and substance of the negotiations between the LTTE and the government, when they take place.