Peace talks: Patchwork continues
By our Political Editor
The lady photographer shot from all angles as the ebullient Yasushi Akashi, Japan's messiah of peace to Sri Lanka, waxed eloquent at a crowded news conference at Colombo's Hotel Galadari.

With cheque book in his pocket and a broad, slithery smile, that was how he was ending his latest pilgrimage to the island. Since his previous visit on May 11, this year, he was in Colombo and Kilinochchi again to remind the protagonists to a separatist war, how much both were losing by not talking peace. That glittering 4.5 billion dollars from the donor co-chairs hosted by Japan will not shine forever, he hinted. There were other trouble spots in the world that were cash-starved and more deserving.

A mild interruption came when the lady photographer ended her session with the camera and chose to play reporter. She introduced herself as Anila Hettiaratchi, a photographer attached to the Government Peace Secretariat or (the Secretariat Co-ordinating the Peace Process). She had a question to ask, she told Akashi. He lit up again.

Asked Anila "what is the magic you can bring forth to ensure the two parties (the Government and the LTTE) arrive at a peaceful settlement?" Responded the messiah, "politicians have not yet found out such magic."

Instead of raising the question with Akashi, Anila could have saved some embarrassment if she raised the question from her own Secretary General Jayantha Dhanapala. If there was such magic, he could have gone far beyond in the quest for peace, so far limited to merely changing his own designation from Director General to Secretary General.

And Akashi would certainly have used such magic long before his foray into the Sri Lankan ethnic crisis. He would not have been dubbed as the born loser for his diplomatic defeats in the Balkans. Nor would he have lost his yearning to become a city father in the Tokyo Municipality. But to become the grand daddy of peace in Sri Lanka, he learnt again, is no easy task. Dejected and deflated, he flew from Colombo to New Delhi to relate his harrowing experience, not least the snub he got from Kilinochchi, to his Indian counterparts.

Just as he left our shores, the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Colombo put out a news release. A high-powered team of Norwegian peace facilitators would arrive in Colombo. They are Foreign Minister Jan Petersen, his deputy Vidar Helgesen, and Special Advisor Erik Solheim. Helgesen had just gone through successful heart surgery. He and Solheim will stay behind in Colombo though Petersen will leave after meetings with LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

Petersen made clear "based on signals received from the parties over recent weeks I do not have high expectations, but in difficult times it is even more important to keep engaging with the parties." Yet, Colombo's diplomatic community was agog with reports that Norway would do some hard talking with Prabhakaran, to impress on the LTTE that prolonged delays in returning to the negotiating table would lead to their international isolation.

A similar message was on the cards from US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, who was due in Colombo today. However, he had to change plans to attend the funeral of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founding father of the United Arab Emirates, and later fly to Kabul, Afghanistan.

The fact that international pressure was being brought to bear on him in the coming week was not lost on Prabhakaran. Political Wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan, had briefed his leader on his tour of European and Scandinavian capitals where governments had in unison told the LTTE to return to the negotiating table. He had to articulate the LTTE position. None could do it better than his confidant, advisor, theoretician and Chief Negotiator, Anton Balasingham.

Balasingham was busy at his home in a London suburb writing the Maveerar (Great Heroes) Day speech for Prabhakaran. The speech, viewed by Colombo's diplomatic community as the LTTE's "policy statement," is due this time on Prabhakaran's 50th birthday, on November 26. This time it is certain to contain all the main elements that represent the LTTE's view on the peace process.

A caller from Wanni telephoned Balasingham. On being told that his leader wanted him in the Wanni in time for the Petersen visit, he seemed somewhat confused. "Why the visit and peace talks when Amma is signing a Defence Pact with India," he asked the caller. His Australian born wife Adele had other worries. It is the rainy season in Sri Lanka. There would be lots of mosquitoes in the Wanni. She did not want to expose her husband to health hazards though his services would be required for just an hour or more.

But who would say "no" to the LTTE leader? Balasingham arrives in Colombo on Tuesday. A Sri Lanka Air Force helicopter is ready to fly him to Kilinochchi. His leader Prabhakaran is ready to articulate the LTTE's own position to Norway and through them to the Government of Sri Lanka. But some over-enthusiastic correspondents had decided the peace talks were to begin soon and resorted to their popular sport of hanging them on "Government sources." At most, this is patchwork. More on that later.

It was not only Balasingham who believed that a defence pact with India will be signed this week. The visit of President Kumaratunga to India, and the visit of Indian Army's Chief of Staff, General N.C. Vij to Colombo, had given rise to widespread speculation that the Defence Co-operation Agreement would be signed this week. Nothing is further from the truth. There were no plans to sign it in New Delhi, and no plans at all to sign it at the political level.

The signing of the agreement is weeks if not months away. Firstly it has to go through the formal scrutiny of an inter ministerial committee and thereafter by the Indian cabinet. Only then will it be up for signature by officials of the two countries. Despite all the hype, the agreement, in its current format only seeks to formalize almost entirely the existing arrangements and practices between India and Sri Lanka in the field of defence and security.

Now to the peace talks. Akashi during his talks with Thamilselvan had, LTTE sources say, conveyed President Kumaratunga's willingness to talk on their demand for an Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA). It only drew a cold response from the Political Wing leader who said the UPFA leaders said one thing at one time and later changed their position. He said her latest offer to talk on ISGA could be conveyed through the Norwegian facilitators to the LTTE.

President Kumaratunga softened her UPFA Government's stance with a willingness to talk on the ISGA. But that was on condition that the LTTE gave an undertaking that a final settlement to the ethnic issue would be within the parameters of the Oslo statement (which she erroneously referred to as the Oslo declaration in her inaugural address to the National Council for Peace and Reconciliation) and the Tokyo Declaration.

Anton Balasingham had pooh-poohed the Oslo statement with a strong assertion that the LTTE still reserved the right to secede. Naturally that was egg on the face for the United National Front Chief Negotiator, G.L. Peiris. He had gone to great lengths to gloat that the Tiger guerrillas had at last shed their garb. They no longer wanted a separate state but were content on a federal solution with internal self determination, he boasted after the talks in Oslo. Like Balasingham, the learned professor was also playing, or juggling, with words.

President Kumaratunga was to hurriedly seize the references to the Oslo declaration (in reality the donor co-chair meeting) in the Norwegian capital. The press release after her meeting with Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, included a reference to this so-called declaration - a move that seemed intended to strengthen Kumaratunga's hand. Even if Wickremesinghe did not offer any concessions during the meeting he gave her the handle to use the so-called Oslo Declaration in defence. What better way to save face than to get your opponents to share your misfortune. This Kumaratunga did willingly. An egregious common front, one would say.

But that again was short —lived. Balasingham hit back in the pro-LTTE website, the Tamilnet. He declared, "The donor conferences held in Oslo on November 25, 2002 and in Tokyo on June 10, 2003 and the resolutions adopted at these meetings cannot bind our liberation organization to a particular framework of a final settlement."

He made clear donor governments could only support the peace process and encourage the protagonists to seek a negotiated political settlement but should not stipulate parameters for a political solution. Balasingham insisted that the Declaration issued after the Oslo Donor Conference on November 25, 2002 "only expressed strong support for the peace process and urged both parties to make further 'expeditious and systematic efforts, without recourse to violence to resolve the hard core issues."

Balasingham said: "The Sri Lanka Government, with the active collusion of its international tactical allies, the donor governments, have formulated several resolutions in the form of a Declaration to super-impose its own set of ideas on the LTTE. We have already rejected the Tokyo declaration as an unwarranted intervention by extra-territorial forces in the peace process. In an official statement on June 23, 2003, the LTTE leadership severely censured the government of Ranil Wickremesinghe for seeking refuge in the so-called international safety net' to resolve the political and economic crisis faced by the country, thereby shifting the peace process from third party facilitation to the realm of international arbitration."

Balasingham then delivers judgement on behalf of the LTTE. He says, "The position advanced by the UNP leaders that a framework for a political solution had emerged based on these three documents (i.e. so called Oslo declaration, the Oslo statement and the Tokyo declaration) is untenable and unacceptable. A solution to the ethnic conflict cannot be pre-determined by the resolutions or declarations of donor conferences, but has to be negotiated by the parties in conflict, without the constraints of external forces."

So, both to the UNP and the UPFA, the Tiger leaders have made the bottom line very clear. The LTTE has not and will not abandon its claim to secede and set up a separate state of Thamil Eelam. In saying so, they have termed a myth the so-called Oslo Declaration.

Therefore, the LTTE is insistent that its demand for an Interim Self Governing Authority should be discussed and institutionalized. Of course, they have so graciously extended a concession to the UPFA Government. That concession is to allow the government to raise any other proposal it has on the grounds that the demand for ISGA is not a "take it or leave it" stance.

So now, for President Kumaratunga the question is whether she succumbs to the LTTE demand and talks ISGA and ISGA only, then wait for a moment to say what her Government has in store. That is whilst the LTTE insists it reserves the right to secede and does not give her any political concessions in return.

The road to peace is still strewn with so many obstacles even if the Norwegians have now come up with a road map. Kumaratunga explained to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan during talks in New Delhi her Government's dilemma caused by LTTE's intransigence. She will do the same with Petersen and his colleagues.

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