SRI LANKA: Too Early to Call Talks a Success, Indian Analysts Say

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Sep 19 2002 (IPS) - Although the talks between Colombo and the Tamil Tigers, are being widely hailed as historic and path-breaking, experts in India, Sri Lanka’s ‘big brother’, are reserving judgement until they have heard pronouncements from reclusive rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

“Basically there is too much being read into what Anton Balasingham told press reporters at Sattahip, ” said M R Narayanaswamy, long-time watcher of the Tamil Tigers and author of the widely acclaimed book ‘Tigers of Lanka’.

Narayanaswamy said there is a very big difference between what Balasingham says and what Prabhakaran may say on the subject of a separate Tamil state. — Prabhakaran is the final authority on the position of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The last time Prabhakaran was heard speaking on the issue was at a dramatic press conference in the rebel-held town of Kilinochchi on Apr. 10, where he said his followers were entitled to kill him if he were to give up the demand for a separate Tamil homeland.

Narayanaswamy, who is currently writing a biography of the LTTE supremo that he expects to release this year, said Prabhakaran has a record of going back on accords.

He said that for instance, in 1987, he promised to help implement the Indo-Sri Lankan accord that had tried to settle the Sri Lankan conflict, and then went on to call it anti-Tamil and pro-Sinhala.

Academicians were cautious too about the results of the Sep 16-18 peace talks held in Thailand.

At the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), South Asia expert S D Muni was inclined to view newspaper reports from Sattahip as a bit too “euphoric”, considering that what had taken place was a preliminary round and not expected to produce much in the way of concrete results.

Muni suspected that Balasingham and his team may not have had a chance to be adequately briefed by Prabhakaran on the LTTE’s exact position, which may emerge at the second stage when substantive issues are addressed.

The real questions, Muni said, are what degree of autonomy is on the table, what is the meaning of a homeland and how the idea of self-determination is to be interpreted.

“This preliminary round is no guarantee to how these substantive issues are going to be resolved,” Muni told IPS.

At the end of the talks Wednesday, Tiger chief negotiator Anton Balasingham said: “We operate according to the concept of a homeland and self-determination. Homeland doesn’t mean separate state as such,” he said.

“Saying that the LTTE is fighting for an independent state has no relevance,” he said, in remarks that conveyed a scaling down of the Tigers’ long-held quest for a separate Tamil homeland. Balasingham said the Tigers are aiming for “substantial autonomy”.

At the same time, both Muni and Narayansawamy referred to the enormous pressure being brought to bear on the LTTE by western powers so that the rebel group now has to appear to be moving forward on the peace process.

There was the carrot of a handsome economic package being offered for reconstruction on the one hand and the stick of a ban on the LTTE by the United States and its allies in the western world including Canada, Australia and Britain.

Muni said both Colombo and the LTTE could “bask in the glory” of the benefits that the economic package promises to bring to the island, ravaged by the nearly two-decade old civil war.

India’s foreign ministry, which piloted the failed 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka accord that has been blamed for India’s military involvement through sending troops into Sri Lanka, reflected the mood of cautious optimism.

On Wednesday, as the talks concluded, foreign ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao reiterated the line that India was “committed to the unity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Sri Lanka”.

“We have supported, and will continue to support all efforts of the Sri Lanka government towards the peace process,” she said.

India has not budged from the position that it wants Prabhakaran extradited from Sri Lanka and stand trial for the 1991 assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, which allegedly carried out at the Tiger leader’s behest.

“Our request for extradition remains valid under international law,” Rao said before the talks began.

In May, India renewed a ban on the LTTE in place since 1992. A Sri Lanka expert at the School of International Studies, P. Sahadevan, interpreted this to mean India’s policy of keeping up the pressure on the LTTE rather than any real seriousness to get Prabhakaran, who now has a measure of international legitimacy, to stand trial in this country.

While India did not send any official observer to the Sattahip talks, both the LTTE and Colombo have taken care to see that New Delhi is kept officially briefed on progress by Erik Solheim, Norway’s special envoy at Sattahip.

“Everyone who takes the slightest look at the map will realise that India is the only neighbour to Sri Lanka,” Solheim was quoted telling the correspondent of the English-language daily ‘The Hindu’ at Sattahip before leaving for New Delhi.

India’s official post-Sattahip position can be gauged by how it will respond to a request put in by Norway’s deputy foreign minister Vidar Helegesen that Balasingham, who is based in Britain, be allowed to transit through India en route to the LTTE’s stronghold in the Jaffna peninsula.

Entry by Balasingham into India’s southern Tamil Nadu state, home to 60 million ethnic Tamils, has been disallowed by the state’s chief minister Jayaraman Jayalalithaa, who recently ordered arrested top political leaders under anti-terrorist laws for merely expressing support for the LTTE.

Jayalalithaa and her party gained enormously through a sympathy wave in their favour after Gandhi was killed at an election rally in Tamil Nadu in 1991 by a woman LTTE suicide bomber.