POLITICS: Tigers Threaten War After Norway Mission Fails

By Amantha Perera Reprint | | Print |

Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Aug 12 2005 (IPS) - Following the failure of Vidar Helgessen, Norway’s deputy foreign minister, to get the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to resume dialogue with the Sri Lankan government, the Tigers have warned that a truce, holding since February 2002, was about to end.

POLITICS: Tigers Threaten War After Norway Mission Fails By Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Aug 12 (IPS) – Following the failure of Vidar Helgessen, Norway’s deputy foreign minister, to get the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to resume dialogue with the Sri Lankan government, the Tigers have warned that a truce, holding since February 2002, was about to end.

On Thursday night, the Tigers’ chief ideologue and negotiator Anton Balasingham squarely blamed the government of Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga for the situation which, he said, arose from security forces providing support to splinter factions with the aim of wekening the LTTE politically and militarily.

”It is a well established fact that there are five Tamil para-military armed groups, including the Karuna group, who are paid and provided with logistic support by the Sri Lanka security forces in this covert military campaign, to destabilise the eastern province and to paralyse the LTTE’s political engagement in the region,” Balasingham said on the pro-Tiger website, ‘Tamilnet.com’.

”It is deeply disappointing to note that President Kumaratunga’s government, which claims serious commitment to peace and negotiated settlement to the ethnic conflict, has allowed its armed forces to support and sustain a shadow war of the Tamil para-militaries in grave violation of the truce agreement that could rekindle the civil war,” Balasingham.

That was the strongest statement yet since since Helgessen’s departure from the island on Aug. 7 at the end of a four-day visit which produced no headway.

”The Norwegians seem to have lost their effectiveness. There needs to be a paradigm shift in the methods and pattern the peace process has taken,” Jehan Perera of the peace-advocacy group, National Peace Council, told IPS.

However, the Nordic-staffed Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM), which had lobbied hard for resumption of dialogue, remained non-committal on whether Helgessen’s visit had been of any use.

Helgessen held meetings with the political leadership of the Tigers, President Kumaratunga and the two presidential frontrunners, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse and Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremasinghe.

His visit was overshadowed by issues surrounding a still-to-be-fixed date for the next presidential election and a hard-line stance maintained by the Tigers towards negotiations.

The Tigers rejected offers made by Kumaratunga to renegotiate the ceasefire in an attempt to break the impasse. Helgessen said that the Norwegians too did not believe the truce should be renegotiated. ”We should look at ways it can be implemented. We should keep improving the ceasefire,” he said.

Increasing violence in the Tamil-dominated northeast of the country has, however, threatened to undermine the Norwegian-brokered ceasefire that has held since February 2002.

The truce is the longest in Sri Lanka’s two-decade-old civil conflict that has killed more than 65,000 people.

While the truce held, peace talks between the two have made no progress since April 2003 and has come under increasing stress since April 2004 when the high-ranking Tiger leader, Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan alias Karuna, defected to the government side.

Balasingham accused the Sri Lankan security of ”providing sanctuary and support” to Karuna and his group and demanded that ”the Sri Lankan military should assume direct responsibility for the bloody internecine warfare that is threatening the current peace process”.

”The Colombo regime is fully aware of the situation. Yet, the government attempts to distort this violent phenomenon as an internal conflict within the LTTE arising from the split by the Karuna group,” Balasingham said.

Balasingham reiterated demands that the government not only stop support for the splinter factions but also proactively disarm them.

”A congenial situation conducive to the resumption of the peace process could be created once these Tamil armed groups are disarmed and a secure environment is created for the LTTE’s political cadres to carry out political work in the government-controlled areas of the northeast,” he said.

The government and the military have steadfastly denied they were helping the Karuna group. But privately, security forces officers have said that it would be difficult to disarm the renegades and Karuna recently said that he had the support of 5,400 cadres, suggesting a bloodbath if moves were made towards disarming his men.

The Tigers have been threatening to enter government-held areas carrying arms and in contravention to the provisions of the ceasefire agreement if their requests for additional security for its cadres were not granted. The threats followed a botched claymore mine attack on political cadres in the east on Jun. 26.

Stray acts of violence have tended to exacerbate tensions. The killing of a Tamil barber in northern Jaffna on Aug. 4 – which the army claimed was accidental – was swiftly avenged by the abduction and murder of the superintendent of police Charles Wijewardene.

An Army soldier was seriously injured in Jaffna during a knife attack on Aug. 7 and two Tigers were shot dead in Ampara in the east on Aug. 10.

”The ceasefire agreement is severely threatened by Colombo’s shadow war using paramilitary groups in the east. The patience of the Tamil people is running out,” said S P Tamilselvan, who heads the political wing of the LTTE.

The Karuna faction has killed several high-profile Tigers and the internecine clashes have disrupted LTTE political work in the east.

Pro-Tiger civic groups have launched a series of rallies in the northeast calling for the immediate withdrawal of security forces. ”An environment must be created to enable us to decide our destiny and our people are continuing to rise as a force to procure the goal of a sacred and higher life of freedom,” a proclamation at a civic rally said.

”While making this proclamation, we seek the recognition by the international community of our basic rights and life of freedom with peace on the basis of our traditional homeland, our nationhood and self-rule and struggle for sovereignty,” it said.

The National Resurgence Front (NRF), a civilian organisation in the north, announced this week that it was commencing self-defence training for civilians in Tiger-held areas.

Secretary of the Front, S. Pasapathipillai, said the training sessions would be held all over Tiger-controlled areas. ”At a time when the government was jeopardizing the solution (to the ethnic conflict), there is no option but to do this,” he said.

The first training session took place on Aug.10 at Pallai, barely five kms from the line of control at Muhamalai in Jaffna. The Tigers have given basic combat training to civilians during the height of the war.

Security forces have increased patrols and checking in Jaffna following the police officer’s murder. Tension between the police and the civilian population in Jaffna was also high, reports said.

A breakthrough is unlikely any time soon, according to analysts, especially because both Sri Lanka and Norway were in the midst of election fever and put peace negotiations on the backburner.

”Norwegians have been taken over by their elections (due in September). And here too, the focus is on elections, not on solving the peace problem,” Perera said.

Erik Solheim, the Norwegian special peace envoy for Sri Lanka, has taken leave from the process to concentrate on election work. ”He is the person with the largest experience in the process. He has been involved in it from the inception,” Perera added.

While Kumaratunga has appeared accommodative towards the Tigers in recent weeks, Rajapakse, her party’s next presidential candidate, is yet to clearly state his stance on the conflict.