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Body blow for Sri
Lanka
By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO - Although the assassination on
Friday of Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman
Kadirgamar has sorely tested relations, the
three-year-old truce between the separatist
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the
government will likely hold.
Kadirgamar
probably paid the price for getting the LTTE
banned as a terror outfit in the United States,
Britain and several Western countries when a
sniper, evading the massive security around his
private residence, fatally shot him as he stepped
out of his swimming pool.
Colleagues and
friends, including President Chandrika Kumaratunga
and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, rushed to
the hospital where Kadirgamar was taken for
emergency surgery. Weekend news reported that a
stunned Kumaratunga broke down on seeing the body
of her trusted aide.
Troops and police
swarmed over the capital setting up road blocks
and checking vehicles while naval craft were
deployed along the shoreline and helicopters flew
low over the port city to prevent easy getaway of
the unknown assassins.
The government was
at first loathe to blame any group for the murder
and ministers Nimal Siripala de Silva and John
Senevirathana said at the hospital it was
premature to reach any conclusion.
Kadirgamar was "felled by political foes
opposed to the peaceful transformation and who
were determined to undermine attempts towards a
negotiated political solution to the ethnic
conflict", Kumaratunga said in a statement
immediately after the murder.
But after
primary investigations were completed, the
government said the LTTE was responsible. "The
LTTE has denied any involvement in the killing but
the government finds it difficult to accept it,"
de Silva said Saturday afternoon.
For
their part, the Tigers denied responsibility and S
P Tamilselvan, head of the LTTE's political wing,
berated Colombo for hastily blaming the Tigers for
the assassination and made counter-accusations
that implicated the Sri Lankan army.
"We
also know that there are sections within the Sri
Lankan armed forces operating with a hidden agenda
to sabotage the ceasefire agreement," Tamilselvan
said in a statement that appeared on the
pro-Tiger, Tamilnet.com, website.
The
murder comes at a time when the truce between
Colombo and Tigers is under severe pressure. The
Norwegian-brokered ceasefire, the longest during
two decades of civil war, was entered into in
February 2002.
The conflict on the island
that has pitted the Tamil minority, dominant in
the north and east of the island, against the
largely Buddhist, majority Sinhalese, has been
raging for more than two decades and has resulted
in the deaths of more than 65,000 people.
Of Sri Lanka's 19 million plus population,
74% is Sinhalese while Tamils, who mostly follow
the Hindu religion, form a large minority with
18%. Kadirgamar was of Tamil origin.
Despite the ceasefire, negotiations have
been stalled since April 2003 and the relationship
has been under increasing strain since the
defection of Vinayamoorthi Muralitharan, alias
Karuna, the Tigers' former military chief in the
east, to the government side.
The Tigers
have blamed Colombo for promoting a war of
attrition using Karuna's dissident faction. Barely
24 hours before the Kadirgamar assassination,
chief Tiger theoretician Anton Balasingham warned
that Colombo's support for a shadow war could
rekindle all out hostilities.
Tamilselvan
also reflected the same thinking when he alleged
that dissension among nationalist elements in the
south of the country led to the Kadirgamar murder
and that the government should look inward rather
than palm off the blame to the Tigers.
The
military said that it had apprehended two Tiger
suspects from near the slain minister's residence
earlier in the month. Military spokesperson
Brigadier Daya Rathanyake said that the two
detainees were reconnoitering the area.
Several days before the strong Balasingham
statement, the latest efforts by Norwegian peace
brokers to break the deadlock failed when Deputy
Foreign Minister Vidar Helgessen returned to Oslo
empty-handed from Colombo.
"The killing
[of Kadirgamar] puts the peace process in Sri
Lanka to a serious test," Norwegian Foreign
Minister Jan Peterssen said in a statement.
The government indicated that the two
parties had drifted further apart following the
assassination. "Restarting of the peace process
has been seriously undermined," head of the
government Peace Secretariat, Jayantha Dhanapala,
said.
However, the government was quick to
allay concern among the donor community that a
drift toward open hostilities was now inevitable
and said that it would uphold the truce despite
the charges against the Tigers. Reflecting the
international mood, de Silva said that the
government remained fully committed to the
ceasefire.
"Together we must honor his
[Kadirgamar's] memory by re-directing ourselves to
peace and ensuring that the ceasefire remains in
force," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
said earlier in a statement.
The
Norwegians, who have been involved in the present
truce from the inception, said that it was of
great importance that both the Tigers and Colombo
honored the ceasefire agreement.
The
government said that it had already complained to
the Nordic-staffed Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission
of the killing. The monitors have ruled the
assassination was a violation of the ceasefire but
stopped short of blaming the Tigers.
However, Kumaratunga, already saddled with
a minority government and elections looming on the
horizon, is bound to come under pressure from
nationalist parties in the south.
"Our
resolve not to hand this country to one of the
worst criminals in the world grows stronger," the
Marxist People's Liberation Front (PLF) said in a
condolence message.
"This horrific crime
instead of cowing us, strengthens the will of the
people to resist dictatorship and fight for true
equality, multi-culturalism and multi-ethnicity,"
the PLF message said.
The nationalist PLF
pulled out of the government in June when
Kumaratunga entered into an agreement with the
Tigers to share of US$3 billion in tsunami aid,
plunging the country into political uncertainty.
"We believe that it is better to die
fighting for a common humanity than to live like a
coward," the front said in the statement, hinting
at its future course.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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