POLITICS-SRI LANKA: Fifth Round of Peace Talks Focuses on Rights Issue

by Johan Mikaelsson

BERLIN, Feb 9 (IPS) - At the fifth round of Sri Lanka peace talks, representatives of the government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have agreed to deal with key human rights and political issues.

Concluding two days of discussions, both chief negotiators said momentum toward a peace settlement was now ”irreversible.” The talks that are being facilitated by the Norwegian government were overshadowed by a suicide blast in Sri Lanka.

Just hours before talks began Friday at the Norwegian Embassy in Berlin, reports came in that two Norwegian truce monitors and a female interpreter had been forced to jump overboard after inspecting a rebel boat they said was smuggling weapons into Sri Lanka. The three rebels aboard set fire to the boat and blew themselves up.

LTTE's Anton Balasingham denied the rebels were smuggling weapons and said the gun boat had gone to help a fishing boat that had reported engine failure at sea.

He accused the Sri Lankan navy and truce monitors of mishandling the incident appropriately, but said it had ”not affected the spirit of the (peace) process.”

”We have had a bitter experience in engaging in a bloody war without achieving anything substantially,” Balasingham told reporters. ”We are confident that a political settlement is the answer.”

The government's chief negotiator, Professor G.L. Peiris said he did not expect the incident to affect the donor countries´ will to give aid for reconstruction of the war-ravaged country.

”The international community sees this as a process. They are aware it is an extremely complex and painful situation. 20 years of furious war is not going to be sorted out over night. They show maturity in understanding. And the process has had its ups and downs. But one thing that is quite evident is that the two parties hold fast to the political process,” Peiris said.

Underlined the progress during the step-by-step process, since the cease-fire agreement was signed, a year ago, Peiris said nobody had been killed due to war, all sections of the society had benefited and economy was on the rise.

The first international donor conference, held in Oslo last November, mobilised about 70 million dollars for rehabilitation. Another donour meeting is scheduled in Japan on June 9-10.

”We are a refreshing example of two combatants, who have been at war for two long decades, now appealing to the world with one voice to rebuild the country which has been ravaged by ethnic conflict,” Peiris said.

Norway´s deputy foreign minister, Vidar Helgesen, who is one of the facilitators, explained in his opening statement at the Berlin peace talks that the World Bank custodianship of the Northeast Reconsruction Fund would be signed ”next week”.

The money released will be more than welcome for use in the 15 projects identified by both parties as most urgent. The projects are aimed at improving the humanitarian situation in the north-east of Sri Lanka. They will relate to irrigation, basic health-care and education.

Over 64,000 people have been killed since war broke out in 1983 between the LTTE rebels, fighting for a separate state for the minority Tamils in the north and east, and the government, consisting of mainly the majority of Sinhalese.

A Norwegian-brokered cease-fire signed a year ago has stopped the fighting, and the rebels have expressed willingness to settle for autonomy within Sri Lanka under a federal structure.

Some one million Sri Lankans have fled the country and about as many have been internally displaced as a result of the conflict. The war has left deep scars in the society and a majority of people now support the on-going peace process.

The negotiators reported progress in the first discussion on human rights since peace talks began in September. Both sides agreed to have Ian Martin, a former head of Amnesty International, draft a document outlining human rights commitments to be implemented in the further course of negotiations, a joint statement after the talks said.

An agreement on Martin's significant role was achieved between the government and rebel envoys at the January talks in Thailand.

An issue of discord is the Tamil Tigers' use of children as combatants. UNICEF, Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) and Save the children, a child rights group have all claimed that LTTE continue to have many children in their ranks. The National Peace Council and other NGOs believe the answer lies in civil society pressure against rights violations.

According to Balasingham, however, the LTTE has made a solemn pledge openly and publicly, also to the UNICEF that ”we will cease all forms of recruitment of under-age children”.

He assured that the LTTE had handed over 350 children to their parents. ”Whenever children under the age of 18 years come to LTTE offices, seeking to join the movement, we send them back home.” (END/IPS/AP/EU/IP/JM/RAJ/03)