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Tigers prove the president right
By B Raman
Sri Lankan
President Chandrika Kumaratunge, who has repeatedly
expressed her concern over the way in which the
government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe has
negotiated with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE) and blindly trusted their promises of good
behavior, must be feeling vindicated by the LTTE's
suspension on Monday of its participation in the
process.
A letter written by Anton Balasingham,
the head of the LTTE delegation to the peace talks, to
the prime minister, says, "The LTTE leadership has
decided to suspend its participation in the negotiations
for the time being. We will not be attending the donor
conference in Japan in June." Interestingly, there is no
mention of the next round of peace talks scheduled to
take place in Thailand from April 29 to May 2. This has
given rise to some speculation as to whether the LTTE's
decision to suspend its participation relates to the
entire negotiations process or only to the negotiations
with international donors on reconstruction aid.
While backing the negotiation process itself,
Kumaratunge has been vocally critical of the negotiating
strategy of her prime minister, which, in her view, was
enabling the LTTE to exploit the process for
consolidating its hold over Tamil-inhabited areas and in
setting up a de facto Tamil state even while proclaiming
its willingness to consider a negotiated federal setup
as a solution to the problems of the Tamils.
The
president felt that by Wickremasinghe's over-eagerness
to keep the process going, however intransigent the LTTE
might be on critical issues, and by making one
concession after another to the demands of the LTTE
without any quid pro quo, her premier was giving an
impression of negotiating from a position of weakness,
which could prove counter-productive.
She also
made no secret of her unhappiness over the way the Sri
Lankan monitoring mission (SLMM) set up under the
leadership of Norway, the so-called facilitator of the
peace process, was bending backwards to humor the LTTE
and coax it to continue to participate in the process
and closing its eyes to repeated infringements by the
LTTE of the provisions of the ceasefire agreement
reached by it and the government before the talks began.
The disquieting attitude of Norway became
apparent in the manner in which the SLMM sought to give
the benefit of doubt to the LTTE by exonerating it of
any responsibility or playing down its responsibility
for serious incidents at sea involving ships of the
so-called LTTE navy.
In the first incident, the
LTTE was thwarted by the Sri Lankan navy while trying to
smuggle an anti-aircraft weapon and other arms and
ammunition. The LTTE's sea cadres chose to scuttle the
ship and go down with it to avoid being captured with
their consignment - similar to what Kittu, a prominent
leader of the LTTE, did in 1993 when he was intercepted
by the Indian coast guard while trying to smuggle a
consignment of arms and ammunition procured in Pakistan.
In the second incident, 15 Chinese and two
Sinhalese were feared killed on March 20 when the
Chinese trawler Fu Yuan Ya 225 was attacked by a
suspected LTTE naval unit off the Mullaitivu coast of
eastern Sri Lanka. In the third incident reported on
March 31, two Sri Lankan military personnel were injured
when a Sri Lankan troop transporter was fired on with
small arms.
No Tamil organization of Sri Lanka
other than the LTTE is known to have a sea-fighting
capability. There have been no reports of any rogue
elements in the LTTE's so-called navy operating on their
own without the knowledge of the LTTE leadership. The
seas around Sri Lanka have never had a history of armed
pirates operating in them.
In spite of this, the
SLMM chose to accept at face value the LTTE's denial of
any responsibility for the last two incidents and sought
to give the impression that hitherto unidentified third
parties might have been responsible for them. What was
more shocking was the suggestion reportedly made by the
SLMM for preventing a recurrence of similar incidents.
In a paper prepared for consideration by the government
and the LTTE, the SLMM reportedly suggested that the
LTTE's Sea Tigers be treated as a "de facto naval unit"
while reiterating the "undebatable obligation of the Sri
Lankan navy's legitimate task of safeguarding
sovereignty and territorial integrity".
"Sovereignty and territorial integrity" of what?
The whole of Sri Lanka or only of those areas falling
outside the control of the LTTE? These vague
formulations, even if not so designed, would have the
ultimate effect of conferring legitimacy on the
existence and operations of the Sea Tigers and their
ships used for the smuggling of arms and ammunition and
categorizing certain portions of the territorial waters
of Sri Lanka as falling within the jurisdiction of the
de facto LTTE administrative setup, the legitimacy of
which has not been recognized by the international
community. Naturally, there has been strong criticism of
these formulations in Sri Lanka.
While these
incidents at sea contributed to malaise and the
consequent shadows over the peace talks, the LTTE's
decision to suspend its participation in the talks had
been sought to be justified on three grounds, unrelated
to these incidents, by Balasingham. These grounds are:
The failure of the Sri Lankan government and Norway
to enable the participation of the LTTE on an equal
footing at an international donors' conference held at
Washington on April 14. The letter says: "We view the
exclusion of the LTTE, the principal partner to peace
and the authentic representatives of the Tamil people,
from discussions on critical matters affecting the
economic and social welfare of the Tamil nation, as a
grave breach of good faith. Your government, as well as
our facilitator Norway, are fully aware of the fact that
the United States has legal constraints to invite
representatives of a proscribed organization to their
country. In these circumstances an appropriate venue
could have been selected to facilitate the LTTE to
participate in this important preparatory aid
conference. But the failure on the part of your
government to do so gives cause for suspicion that this
omission was deliberate. The exclusion of the LTTE from
this conference has severely eroded the confidence of
our people in the peace process."
The failure of the government to withdraw its troops
from Jaffna and other areas as part of the normalization
process agreed to under the ceasefire accord. The letter
says in this regard: "Though there is peace due to the
silencing of the guns, normalcy has not returned to
Tamil areas. Tens of thousands of government troops
continue to occupy our towns, cities and residential
areas suffocating the freedom of mobility of our people.
Such a massive military occupation of Tamil lands,
particularly in Jaffna - a densely populated district -
during peace times denying the right of our displaced
people to return to their homes, is unfair and unjust."
The Poverty Reduction Strategy worked out by the
government as a basic document for seeking international
assistance has failed to highlight the acute economic
hardships and the collapse of the infrastructure in the
Tamil areas due to the military operations of the
security forces.The letter says: "The conditions
prevailing in the south [Sinhalese areas] are distinctly
different from the northeast [Tamil areas] where the
scale and magnitude of the infrastructural destruction
is monumental and the poverty is acute. Ignoring this
distinctive reality, your government posits poverty as a
common phenomenon across the country and attempts to
seek a solution with a common approach. This approach
grossly understates the severity of the problems faced
by the people in the northeast."
The letter has,
however, reiterated the LTTE's commitment to seek a
negotiated political solution to the Tamil problem once
its conditions are met. A careful analysis of the
negotiating strategy of the LTTE during the six rounds
of talks held so far would indicate certain constants to
which it has been fiercely adhering without making any
concession:
Its determination to project itself as an equal
party with the same status as the government of Sri
Lanka in all interactions with international donors
whose assistance is sought for the reconstruction of Sri
Lanka.
Its resolve to secure the withdrawal of the Sri
Lankan forces from Jaffna, which the LTTE regards as the
capital of Tamil Eelam, even before embarking on
substantive discussions on the future political setup of
the country. It projects such withdrawal as an essential
component of the normalization process which has to
precede substantive political negotiations. Its repeated
emphasis on this demand is reflective of its perception
that its de facto setup in the Tamil areas would be
incomplete without Jaffna as the capital.
Its perception of the talks not as between the state
of Sri Lanka and an organization which had taken up arms
against it to achieve certain political objectives, but
as between the de jure state of Sri Lanka and a de facto
state of Tamil Eelam on the modalities for retaining and
adjusting the de facto setup, with its own
administrative, police, judiciary and military
components, as part of an overall solution based on a
federal facade for the two state entities - Sinhalese
and Tamil.
The difficulties encountered by
Wickremasinghe in furthering the peace process, despite
his sincerity, are due to his unwise confrontational
attitude to the president, who belongs to a different
political formation, and his avoidance of consulting and
associating her with the process; his failure to reach a
national consensus on the negotiating strategy; his
wrong belief that international support and pressure on
the LTTE alone would keep the peace process going and
moderate the stance of the LTTE, even in the absence of
total domestic support for his strategy, and his
hesitation to make it clear to the LTTE what points are
negotiable and what are not.
The withdrawal or
redeployment of the security forces in Jaffna and other
areas even before a political solution on the future
setup of Sri Lanka is reached is fraught with serious
difficulties. Firstly, Sinhalese public opinion is
unlikely to accept it. Secondly, even if it does, the
army might demur. Thirdly, even if he persuades the army
commanders to accept it, it has to be accepted by the
president, who is the supreme commander of the armed
forces. Fourthly, any confrontation between the
president and him on this issue might end up in the
politicization of the armed forces, which is not
desirable in the interest of democracy in Sri Lanka.
Moreover, there are other important aspects of
the peace process, such as its impact on Muslims in the
Eastern Province, which have not been given the
attention they deserve by the prime minister. There are
already clear indications of a growing radicalization of
sections of the Muslim youth, under the influence of the
Lashkar-e-Toiba of Pakistan, which is a member of Osama
bin Laden's International Islamic Front, due to their
unhappiness over the neglect of the feelings and
concerns of the Muslims and over the failure of the
government to put down what they look on as the
high-handed activities of LTTE cadres in their areas.
The lack of transparency surrounding the peace
talks and the reluctance of the prime minister to
clearly articulate the government position and seek the
president's concurrence for it remain major roadblocks
to a successful outcome.
B Raman is
Additional Secretary (ret), Cabinet Secretariat,
Government of India, and presently director, Institute
For Topical Studies, Chennai; former member of the
National Security Advisory Board of the Government of
India. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com. He was also head of the
counter-terrorism division of the Research &
Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency,
from 1988 to August, 1994.
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