Sattahip was a major port for Sukhothai the first Thai capital. But Sukhothai was partly built by craftsmen from our own Gampola and modeled after Gadaladeniya. For nearly 1,500 years our culture had poured into the South-East Asian region and Thais internalized this. The new Thai head of the WTO once spoke of his emotions at visiting the Dalada Maligawa, later attacked by the Tigers. Once, we loomed large in the Thai imagination. Today, Tigers smuggle arms there.
Now: the actors.

Under Norway's constitution, talks such as these would not be allowed without a prior three-fourths majority in her Parliament, - and definitely not to alter her Constitution. In contrast, our 19th Amendment is to accommodate the present talks. Without a changed Constitution, the immediate Tiger prize of the interim council cannot be given.

Solheim sings in Sattahip the praises of Balasingham - by any criteria, a war criminal candidate. Solheim, once wanted Kissinger tried for war crimes.

Pieris, "our" Sattahip actor was high on the Tiger assassination list. Balasingham would have been one of the team who sentenced him to death. Pieris speaks falsely of "a legacy of rancour and hatred." The legacy is only one of politics; there is no personal hatred between ordinary Sinhalese and Tamils. Quoting Shakespeare, but significantly not an Asian, Pieris talks about grasping "affairs of men". He appears a native out to impress his Western masters, the international community. He adds that "the ancient Greeks called [us] Serendib". His Western masters would cringe as it was not the Greeks but the Arabs who used this corruption of Sinhala Dvip. The native has much to learn.

Attempts to control opinion towards a Tiger perspective are very open. Examples: a monks' protest against the Tigers at the Independence Hall is falsely depicted as supporting the talks. And in the rigged TV chat shows that replaced earlier debates; half baked, so-called Vidwathun, are paraded, fronting for Tiger positions. Consequently, "Thimpu principles" are again coming out of this NGO woodwork. These un-principles arose during the Indian attempt at subverting us.

Balasingham has not given up his Thimpu principles - the traditional homelands, self-determination and that Tamils constitute a separate nation. These, as any person familiar with Tiger literature would immediately recognize, are the legal prerequisites for acceptance of a separate state. But these invented "traditions" however have changed overnight. At Sattahip the traditional homelands of the Tamils became for Balasingham "homeland of the Tamils and Muslims". Ranil Wickremesinghe's more illustrious predecessors argued against these racist inventions. Ranil once agreed, but his proposed interim council is based squarely on its acceptance.

Balasingham faulted the confused war by the former regime as a policy of "political solutions …. by military means" but ignores that since 1972, force was the very policy followed by armed separatists. Just like the present government has become a major spokesman for the Tigers, so has the reverse occurred. Balasingham says there was an "overwhelming popular mandate" for the present government. But any analysis of the elections shows the mandate as small.

Helgesen, Norwegian foreign ministry official, speaks authoritatively of the "experience of other peace processes" ignoring that Norway's only other significant intervention namely in the Mid-East was a fiasco. He mentions the importance of "the peace advocacy of NGOs" those very creatures fashioned by Norwegian and other money and who have hugely distorted Sri Lankan reality. He also evokes the "international community" ignoring that at this very moment, this entity, ignoring any conflict resolution, is about to unleash a massive war in the Mid-East, helped by the Norwegian failure there.

Duplicity is a proven LTTE tactic. The master deceiver Balasingham was laughing with Premadasa only a short time before the LTTE used the very weapons Premadasa gave to kill 700 unarmed policemen. Later, Premadasa's assassin Babu became his trusted servant before slaughtering him.

The Sri Lankan government hailed Balasingham's overt statement demanding self-determination and not full independence. This deliberately hides statements of LTTE strategists on goals of self-determination. One, Parker said "the war in Sri Lanka is a war of national liberation [that is for a separate state] because the Tamil people have the right to self-determination". Prabhakaran reiterated this at his infamous interview that he should be shot if he wavered from separatism. Failing to obtain legal acceptance of "self determination" which peacefully leads to separatism, Balasingham says he will "fight for independence". The LTTE was using the politics of deception again.

The Norwegians says that the LTTE -Sri Lankan government joint committee was a step "towards the establishment of a provisional administrative structure for the North-East". During this period of "months and years of negotiations" Tigers will stabilize its stranglehold in this "self-determined" area. Possession and control is nine-tenths of the law. Camouflaging their demands, Tigers now strive to get at the table what they failed in battle. [In the mean time the government postponed local government elections ensuring that democratic niceties will not stand in the way of Tiger rule.]

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