Since the inside of "the glasshouse by the east river" is deemed a safe haven for visiting politicians, corrupt military dictators and even war mongers like Ariel Sharon, there were no metal detectors outside the press room to check exploding ballpoint pens or booby-trapped laptap computers.

And perhaps most importantly, no news photographer was warned that he will be shot in his tracks by gun-toting security officials if he rushed to the podium to take a closer angle of the leader.

There was civility all around. Wittingly or unwittingly, President Kumaratunga has stopped describing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as "terrorists". And in her address to the UN General Assembly last week she sanitized them as " rebels" - not once, but twice.

Even the LTTE head honcho Velupillai Prabhakaran, described by some as a volatile mix of the late Pol Pot and the indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, had a more respectable veneer attached to his name.

In the time-honoured journalistic tradition of the New York Times, the Sri Lankan president kept referring to the LTTE leader as "Mr Prabhakaran". Perhaps it was the safari suit. Or may be the clean-shaven face that adorned the pages of newspapers and news magazines throughout the world last month. If Ariel is "Mr Sharon", why shouldn't Velupillai be "Mr Prabhakaran?"

Asked if the question of extradition surfaced during her recent talks in India, the president recalled that the Indian government did ask for Prabhakaran's extradition about four years ago. "But then we couldn't find him."

Now that the whole world knows his whereabouts, she said, there are some Indian officials who are keen that the LTTE leader be hunted down to stand trial in India for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The BJP government, however, has so far not made a formal request for extradition. The president, however, switched her tone on Prabhakaran when she quoted unnamed Indian political leaders as asking her: "Would a Sri Lankan government accept a convicted multiple murderer as head of an interim administration in the country?"

She hinted that this could be an interesting constitutional and legal question for any Sri Lankan government. Asked if the Western world had radically changed its views on terrorism after the September 11 attacks on the United States, she couldn't resist the temptation of taking a passing stock at Washington- but not by name.

When Sri Lanka was fighting terrorism over the past 18 years, the developed world did not take much interest, she said. Yes, the United States and Britain did ban the LTTE.
"That was all they did- because they permitted the LTTE to collect funds from the Tamil expatriate community in their countries," she added. But all that changed after September 11 when Western nations began cracking down on funding for terrorism.
The Sri Lankan government was constantly "pulled up" even for minor infractions and excesses by the police or the army. The double standards are obvious, she pointed out, because human rights do not matter in the new war on terrorism - because "even carpet bombing of cities" is fully acceptable.

The president, of course, did not mean Persian carpets or Afghan rugs. Asked if she is confident that the upcoming peace talks would be successful, the president would only say that several governments that have tried to talk to the LTTE have "got very seriously fooled" by it. "So no one is hugely elated", she said, adding that there are still some positive signs this time around.

The LTTE leader, she said, had at least agreed to come before the world media for the first time in his political career. And that was the first positive sign. And the second? The peace talks could get the LTTE to renounce terrorism as a means to achieving its political ends.

But she still remains sceptical. "The only final and successful solution is when the LTTE agrees to talk about an alternative to a separate state." "They are skirting around the bush- as they have done for the past 18 years," she said. Is she not hopeful of the upcoming talks? "I have not lost hope. I never lose hope." She had a tinge of sarcasm when she said that the LTTE had agreed to give up its call for a separate state under three conditions: a separate homeland, a separate nation and right to self determination. "I don't know which of these three things has been promised by the government. I hope none, because these three things put together equal nothing but a separate state," she said.

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