SRI LANKA: Time to Build on Gains in Peace Talks – Analysts

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jan 14 2003 (IPS) - This year will be crucial for Sri Lanka to build on the early gains achieved during the ongoing peace talks with the Tamil Tiger rebels, say analysts.

In the government’s favour is the growing number of people who believe that the country is unlikely to go back to war, says Kethesh Loganathan, a conflict resolution analyst at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), an independent think tank in Colombo.

This year will be crucial for Sri Lanka to build on the early gains achieved during the ongoing peace talks with the Tamil Tiger rebels, say analysts.

In the government’s favour is the growing number of people who believe that the country is unlikely to go back to war, says Kethesh Loganathan, a conflict resolution analyst at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), an independent think tank in Colombo.

The prospects of any breakdown in the talks and a fresh outbreak of violence are gradually diminishing, adds a political scientist at a leading university who declined to be named. ”Both sides are not interested in fighting and a political solution to the ethnic conflict is being stressed every time the two sides meet.”

Yet the quest for peace should not be rushed, says S Balakrishnan, director at the National Peace Council, a Norwegian-funded peace lobby. ”I think it would go even up to 2005 as there are many issues to overcome for both sides apart from the search for peace.”

During the last round of talks, held in Thailand from Jan. 6-9, the negotiators came up against their first major hurdle – resolving a sharp difference between the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tiger rebels over a stretch of land held by the army in the island’s north.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as the rebels are officially known, wants the army to permit displaced Tamil civilians to resettle in land that government forces currently occupy.

But the military commander in charge of Sri Lanka’s troops in the disagrees, stating in a document that resettlement efforts should be linked to the LTTE giving up its weapons, particularly the long-range guns that could be turned on the army in the future.

However, despite the LTTE’s objections to the commander’s view and its pullout of a special committee set up in the war-ravaged island’s north to discuss the sensitive issues such as de-escalation and normalisation, the talks did not collapse.

The Tigers accepted a government proposal to seek the help of a military expert to cross this hurdle, while pushing ahead with resettlement in the other areas.

”So far there hasn’t been any problem that cannot be overcome. Both sides have been very flexible in their approach and looking for solutions rather than arguments,” said the academic.

Yet, Colombo cannot afford to be too complacent because there are issues that need to be addressed to avoid undermining the peace process, the analysts say.

The spiralling cost of living is one of them, says Loganathan, adding that the government needs to pay more attention to other weaknesses in the economy like unemployment to woo public opinion towards peace. ”That is a critical issue this year.”

Just as significant is the growing disagreements about the peace process between Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose governing party has a slim majority in the parliament, and President Chandrika Kumaratunga, whose party dominates the opposition ranks.

Kumaratunga has stated publicly that she is not opposed to the peace efforts, which formally began in February last year when the Wickremesinghe government and the LTTE signed a ceasefire agreement.

But she has expressed displeasure at not being informed by the government’s moves and the refusal of the ruling United National Party to include representatives of her People’s Alliance in the peace process, including in the government’s negotiating team.

This month, in a conciliatory gesture, the premier has agreed to brief Kumaratunga at weekly meetings on the peace process.

The almost two-decades long conflict, where the LTTE has fought a separatist war to carve out an independent state of Tamil Eelam in the Indian Ocean island’s north and east, has killed over 64,000 people.

The peace talks, which began at a Thai naval base in September last year, are the fifth effort at seeking a resolution through negotiations. Close to 2,500 lives, on average seven per day, have been saved during 2002 due to the guns going silent in the battlefields.

The Norwegian-brokered talks are expected to attract international aid this year to help rebuild the war-ravaged territories and to revive Sri Lanka’s battered economy. A gathering of international donors will be held in Japan in June.

"The government is hoping the donor meeting in June would realise large sums for development," NPC’s Balakrishnan said

The climate conducive to peace in Sri Lanka is also due to attract a host of international figures to the country. Topping the list will be U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who arrives next month in the first visit in 35 years by a U.N. chief.

His visit will be followed in the same month by Carol Bellamy, head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and Olara Otunnu, the U.N. Special Representative on Children in Armed Conflict.