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By Susantha Goonatilake

Sad lessons from the Norway accord on Middle East
It was a hora givusma brokered by the Nor wegians gone completely wrong. No I do not mean the present MOU, but the Oslo Agreement which in 1993 promised to bring peace to the Mid-East. It is today in tatters with more intense fighting now than before it. But it is instructive to note how Norwegian meddling - more invited in the Mid-East than here - led to total disaster.

The Oslo Agreement between the PLO and Israel was signed in September 13, 1993, the result of secret negotiations that had been conducted in Norway. It was the outcome of an initiative taken by a research organization of the Norwegian Labour Union, who had good contacts with representatives of the Palestinians and with the Israeli Labour Party - the governing party in Israel at the time.

Before the current collapse, an adulatory article "The Lessons of Oslo" noted the alleged peace process "cues" from Oslo. It gives chilling parallels to Sri Lanka. Let me enumerate these "lessons" from this article of the Norwegian approaches that later led to disaster.

The lessons were: value of secret diplomacy (code for hora givisum); designating "opponents to peace" and marginalizing them (that is in our case calling them names); simplifying the negotiation/presentation of the peace proposal to the issue of ratification, (that is fudging key issues); avoiding posturing and media dynamics (that is denying publicity and space to those pointing out fatal flaws - watch our rigged talk shows). Yet unlike us, both the PLO and the Israelis are not slaves to the so called international community. In the discussions, they were well led and aware of their rights.

As the Oslo agreement set in, it was initially all very rosy. As a commentator in the San Francisco Chronicle noted it was then "all about trust, - - the `peace of the brave,' the euphoria of technicolor trust. But all they should have been talking about - [the core issues] - was postponed." Again, interesting parallels to the Norwegian intervention in Sri Lanka.

Eventually, a series of failures defined the aftermath of the Oslo agreement. The negotiations collapsed in 2000. Soon politicians were scurrying about, attempting desperately to put the pieces back together again. The Oslo peace process now entered a terminal phase even according to Washington, one of its big backers. With its collapse one witnesses a savage Israeli bombardment of Palestinian areas using tanks, rockets and helicopters. The Oslo process dealt only with transitional stages producing only an interim agreement, ducking the final status - core - issues. Deep flaws in the Oslo process were becoming very apparent.

The British Independent now called it "perhaps the most flawed treaty ever negotiated for the Middle East". It added "the whole sorry story of the Oslo agreement - - has to be put in parenthesis [including] its lies and clichés ... For Oslo is dead". The Guardian [British] asserts "The Oslo accords remain a dead letter". Socialism Today adds "The Palestinians' conditions are worse than ever before". There is a state of bloody war.

In spite of the parallel with the Norwegian role, the historical situation in the Mid-East is virtually the reverse in Sri Lanka. Israelis had not lived in the area for 2,000 years. But they got a state carved by Western powers in the Middle East due partly to Western guilt at Nazi massacres of Jews. Palestinians were then driven out.

In Sri Lanka, Sinhalese had a 2,500 year old tradition of continuous occupation with pockets of multi ethnicity among them. A small Tamil kingdom existed for a short interlude limited largely to the Jaffna peninsula. Even then, there is strong evidence that Jaffna had a strong Sinhala presence. The total mono ethnic Tamil entity is only of recent origin after the LTTE ethnically cleansed the peninsula. The phony Tamil traditional homelands are rejected by the US as well as the UNP. (The proposed NE interim council however by definition accepts it.). And in Sri Lanka, language and other cultural rights of Tamils are in law, greater than of minorities in India, Britain, Norway and the US

There are other differences. The Norwegians could not meet Balasingham in London, a situation unthinkable of any of the Oslo Mid East partners. The US has called for democratization of the PLO and its acceptance of human rights. The PLO may not be perfectly democratic, and there may be human rights lapses, just as there are among the Israelis. But it is far more democratic than our megalomaniac and those cowards who unquestioningly acquiesce to Prabhakaran's total dictatorship.

We are still in the honeymoon period as core issues continue to be driven under the carpet. Occasionally, like in Valaichennai, underlying reality rudely comes to the surface. The core issues now papered over rumbles underground, like in the Middle East, waiting for underlying reality to confront Norwegian meddling. The army had better keep their rifles well oiled.

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