Round 2 will bring on the crucial issue, which is an Interim Administration for the North and the East. From all information we have, the LTTE has been assured that their only demand in the current round of talks, the Interim Administration, will be taken up, and quickly disposed of.

The nagging question is whether this demand will be granted without the core issues including the dropping of the demand for Eelam, surrender of arms and the issue of securing democracy and human rights in the North East being discussed. These issues are necessarily intertwined with the setting up of an Interim Administration to run the North and East of the country.

Into this equation steps in an increasingly queasy President. While peace talks commence with the LTTE, it is the sound of war drums that are heard most clearly in the South. In the opposite Editorial page, our Defense Correspondent has focussed on the details of the President's pro active role in meeting with security chiefs and giving them instructions on how to deal with the LTTE. It would have been best if she had conducted these briefings when she was in fact once in charge in no uncertain terms.

It is transparently clear that the opposition JVP-PA combine will feed on the vulnerabilities of the Interim Administration proposal to regain lost ground with the masses. It is of course their duty to ensure that the country is not divided either de facto, or de jure.

But what could motivate them could be either a genuine feeling of patriotism or sheer desire for power. That's something that all those who are interested in unfolding developments should watch for. The government is at the moment in the process of organizing a rally in support of the peace talks, which is counter to the one opposed to peace talks which was organized by the JVP.

This will only accomplish one thing - which is to divide the people of the South. Instead, the government must embrace genuine opposition opinion and incorporate key opposition concerns into the government's own political agenda. But the difficulty is for the government to filter genuine concern from what could be after all opportunistic political motivations.

In the North, the ostensible representatives of the people speak with one voice, and this one voice echoes that of the LTTE. It is still not certain whether all views of all the people in the North are being heard, due to the continuing threat of the AK 47 sub-machine gun which is still flagrantly in display in the Northeastern landscape, despite the Ceasefire Agreement.

It is a backdrop that calls for a definitive move towards forging a common consensus in the South. The rabble could fight their own battles but the political leadership can rise above that dross and at least seek some basic common ground which will be elemental in forging a common approach in the South. That's so that when it comes to negotiations and tough negotiations at that, the fact that a part of the country is having a showdown is not to the detriment of generations to come.

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