POLITICS: No Return to Arms Despite Sri Lankan Minister’s Slaying

By Amantha Perera Reprint | | Print |

Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Aug 14 2005 (IPS) - Although the dramatic assassination on Friday of Sri Lankan foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar has sorely tested relations, the three-year-old truce between the separatist, militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government will likely hold.

Although the dramatic assassination on Friday of Sri Lankan foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar has sorely tested relations, the three-year-old truce between the separatist, militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government will likely hold.

Kadirgamar probably paid the price for getting the LTTE banned 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 rushed for emergency surgery. Weekend press 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 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.

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 over two decades and resulted in the deaths of more than 65,000 people.

Of Sri Lanka’s 19 million plus population 74 percent is Sinhalese while Tamils, who mostly follow the Hindu religion form a large minority with 18 percent.

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 murder, 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 dissention among nationalist elements in the south of the country led to the Kadirgamar murder and that the government should look inwards 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 Brig. Daya Rathanyake said that the two detainees were reconnoitring 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 murder. ”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 donor community that a drift towards 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 honour 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 honour the ceasefire agreement.

The government said that it had already complained to the Nordic- staffed Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission of the murder. 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 tsunami relief work, 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.