Suspension of Talks Puts Ceasefire to Test

Analysis - By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Apr 25 (IPS) - By pulling out of this month's round of peace talks, the Tamil Tigers have forced a 14-month old ceasefire agreement between the Sri Lankan government and the rebels to face its sternest test.

The question at hand: Will the Tamil rebel group maintain its commitment to the truce, and not return to war, despite refusing to sit with the Sri Lankan government's negotiators for the seventh round of talks that were to be held in Thailand on Apr. 29?

On Monday, the rebels told Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe that it would not be attending the April talks, expressing its protest over being excluded from a meeting of donors held in the United States last week and lack of progress on the ground.

Till now, the language of the ceasefire agreement signed in February 2002 between the two warring parties had been overshadowed by the language of compromise and reconciliation flowing out of the face-to-face peace talks.

What is more, even those Sri Lankans sceptical of the rebels' intentions had come to terms with the manner the rebels were building up toward the first round of peace talks, which were held in Thailand in September last year.

It appeared that the political gamble taken by the government of Wickremesinghe was paying off. The same was true for the Norwegian government, which brokered the truce and arranged for the talks.

Colombo always pointed to the six rounds of peace talks held so far as the best manifestation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) sincerity in signing the 2002 truce to end the two-decade long separatist conflict that has claimed close to 64,000 lives.

But after the relatively smooth sailing the talks have gone through, Sri Lanka's latest attempt at reconciliation has entered uncharted waters.

For its part, the LTTE has said they will not violate the one-year-old ceasefire agreement - a message that has been echoed by Gamini Lakshman Peiris, Colombo's chief peace negotiator.

On Thursday, he told a news conference after a cabinet meeting that the ceasefire agreement was being abided to and that there was no threat of military action resuming. The Norwegian negotiators are maintaining contact with LTTE chief negotiator Anton Balasingham, he added.

Yet that has not convinced those who are familiar with the Tamil rebels' past record, which have included pulling out previous rounds of peace talks. Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's reaction typifies such scepticism - she placed the country's security forces on high alert this week.

''The president directed them (heads of the defence forces) to reintroduce immediately the security measures that were set up in 1995 to ensure the security and safety of the people,'' says a statement released from the president's office.

The last time the LTTE sat down for peace talks was in early 1995, when Kumaratunga's People's Alliance party was in government. In April 1995, shortly after suspending the peace talks ongoing at the time, the LTTE resumed its separatist struggle.

In 1990, peace talks also ended on a similar note -- when the LTTE began its fight for a separate state of Tamil Eelam in north-east Sri Lanka after ending months of talks with the then government in Colombo.

Kumaratunga, who has been a critic of the peace process initiated by Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP) government, wasted little time in drawing parallels between the LTTE's actions this week and in the past.

''The reasons put forward by the LTTE for their withdrawal from the talks are feeble,'' the statement from the president's office added. ''The past experiences of successive governments with the LTTE have been no different.''

Since December 2001, Kumaratunga and Wickremesinghe have been functioning in Sri Lanka's first co-habitation government, due to Wickremesinghe's UNP winning a majority at a parliamentary elections.

On Apr. 21, the Tigers informed Colombo that they are pulling out of the peace talks due to be held in Thailand from Apr. 29 to May 2 and also an international donor conference to be held in Japan in June.

The Tigers were unhappy at being marginalised from an Apr. 14 meeting in Washington to discuss aid to rebuild war-ravaged Sri Lanka, according to a letter from Balasingham to Wickremesinghe.

The letter also pointed to a lack of change on the ground as another reason to stay away from the talks. They included the continued presence of Sri Lankan troops in ''Tamil homes, schools, places of worship and public buildings''.

''Despite the agreed timeframe for this evacuation of troops, which has since passed, there has been no change in the ground situation,'' the letter added.

On Wednesday, in a further reflection of the sea change within the LTTE, the rebel movement's representatives called off a scheduled meeting with the Sri Lankan government to discuss humanitarian and rehabilitation needs in the northern and eastern provinces.

Consequently, the year-old ceasefire agreement will be put to the test in a political climate that has no precedent. In this atmosphere of distrust, the truce's language is the only one the two warring parties continue to agree upon that they will not resume fighting.

Yet by precipitating this turn of events, the LTTE may have inadvertently placed greater pressure on itself than on Colombo it will have to prove that it is a beast whose stripes have changed after the February 2002 ceasefire, and a political animal determined to distance itself from its past. (END/2003)