Sri
Lankan Peace Talks
On The Verge Of Collapse
By Nanda Wickremasinghe
and K. Ratnayake
20 April, 2006
World
Socialist Web
The
Geneva peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are on the brink of collapse, amid escalating
violence in the war zones of Sri Lanka’s North and East. Some
70 people, including military personnel, LTTE cadres and civilians,
have been killed since the beginning of April. Many more have been injured
and thousands have been displaced.
The second round of negotiations
were due to begin today, but were postponed until April 24-25 following
a dispute over the transport of LTTE leaders from the East to the northern
LTTE stronghold for discussions prior to the Geneva talks. The Defence
Ministry, supported by President Mahinda Rajapakse, provocatively turned
down an LTTE request for airforce transport, which has previously been
provided.
Efforts to provide sea transport
collapsed before the government, under international pressure, finally
offered to hire a private helicopter as a sign of good faith. There
is no guarantee, however, that the negotiations will proceed.
In a letter to the Norwegian
ambassador on Monday, LTTE political wing leader S.P. Thamilchelvan
stated that “until the hurdles in front of us to attend the Geneva
talks are removed and a conducive environment created” the LTTE
was unable to attend talks.
Yesterday, in comments to
Reuters, LTTE peace secretariat chief S. Pulithevan appeared to go further,
saying: “While our people are being killed and our shops looted
we are not going to Geneva.” He indicated that the LTTE intended
to discuss an end to the violence with Norwegian peace envoy Jon-Hanssen
Bauer tomorrow.
Bauer arrived in Sri Lanka
yesterday for the second time in two weeks to try to patch up arrangements
for the Geneva talks. Norway is the formal facilitator of the peace
process. The Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), which
supervises the 2002 ceasefire agreement, pessimistically warned on Monday
that the situation in Sri Lanka was spinning out of control.
“Already people are
dying in large numbers, so the situation is unacceptable and there is
no way we can continue like this. The parties need to work their way
out of the deadlock instead of speculating and pondering over why and
who carried out the attacks,” SLMM spokesperson Helen Olafsdottir
said.
In a sign of alarm over the
danger of war, the Colombo stock exchange lost 30 billion rupees or
$US300 million over the Easter break. The All Share Price Index (ASPI)
dropped by 4 percent or 100 points. “An upsurge in violence and
doubt over the Geneva talks saw investors booking profits, leading to
sharp declines on both indices,” John Keells stockbrokers said.
The first round of talks
in Geneva on February 22-23—the first since negotiations were
suspended in April 2003—almost broke down after the LTTE delegation
threatened to walk out if Colombo insisted on changing the current fragile
ceasefire. Under intense international pressure, both sides eventually
agreed to maintain the ceasefire and hold further talks.
The Rajapakse administration,
however, immediately came under fire from its political allies—the
Sinhala extremist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and Jathika Hela Urumaya
(JHU)—for failing to amend the ceasefire agreement and remove
Norway as peace facilitator. The JVP and JHU, which provide crucial
parliamentary support to the minority government and backed Rajapakse
in presidential elections last November, attack the ceasefire and Norway
for being pro-LTTE and undermining Sri Lankan sovereignty.
The military top brass has
also been openly critical of the ceasefire. Sections of the armed forces,
particularly military intelligence, have colluded with Tamil paramilitary
outfits, particularly an LTTE-breakaway group in the East headed by
Karuna or V. Muralitharan. At the first round of talks in Geneva, the
Colombo government agreed to implement the ceasefire requirement to
disarm these paramilitaries, but has done nothing to honour the promise.
There was a lull in the violence
during and immediately after the February talks, but what amounts to
an undeclared war in the North and East is again worsening. The military
has baldly denied assisting Karuna and other paramilitaries, and that
they have been operating from government-controlled territory. Yet,
the incidents have been so brazen that even the SLMM has been forced
to comment.
An SLMM statement condemned
the blowing up of a trawler that killed eight navy personnel in the
northwestern seas on March 25 but also accused the government of failing
to act against the paramilitaries. Countering statements by the army
head Sarath Fonseka, SLMM chief Hagrup Haukland told the Sunday Times:
“Yes we met them (the paramilitaries), spoke with them.”
While acknowledging that he had no evidence of army support for these
groups, Haukland declared: “I am sorry to say that it is a mistake
by the army commander to say they are operating not in government-controlled
area.”
For all the denials by the
government and the military, their political sympathy for the paramilitary
outfits is obvious. On April 10, the political front of the Karuna group,
known as the Thmileela Makkal Viduthalai Puligal (Tamil Eelam Peoples
Liberation Tigers), opened a public office in Batticaloa for the first
time. The ceremony was conducted under heavy police and military guard.
The present round of violence
escalated following the provocative killing of V. Vigneswaran, the president
of pro-LTTE Trincomalee District Tamil Peoples Forum (TDTPF) on April
7. He was shot dead by an unidentified gunman in Trincomalee, an eastern
port city. Vigneswaran was to have filled the post of pro-LTTE MP Joseph
Pararajasingham, who was assassinated by unidentified gunmen last December.
Vigneswaran’s murder
took place within a military high security zone close to army checkpoints
as well as a navy command post. Yet the murderer was not detained. The
military denied any responsibility and the government issued a routine
condemnation of the killing. The LTTE declared it to be the work of
the “army and its intelligence operatives”. Whoever was
responsible, their aim was clearly to provoke violence and scuttle the
upcoming Geneva talks.
Three days later, a group
calling itself Upsurging Peoples Force claimed responsibility for setting
off a claymore mine that killed five soldiers travelling in a truck
at Mirusuvil on the Jaffna peninsula. In Trincomalee on April 11, eleven
navy personnel were killed and eight injured in another mine blast.
While the LTTE formally denied any involvement, there is little doubt
that it ordered the attacks. Attacks and reprisals have now become commonplace
throughout the North and East.
A vicious incident took place
in Trincomalee on April 12. A bomb was triggered in a crowded vegetable
market killing 18 civilians—six Tamils, seven Sinhalese and six
Muslims—and a soldier. Immediately after the blast, a crowd of
Sinhala thugs looted and burned about two dozen shops owned by Tamils
and Muslims. Both the LTTE and the government have blamed each other.
The bombing has greatly heightened
communal tensions in the area. Some 2,000 Tamils have fled to nearby
villages, schools and temples. In some villages, Sinhala farmers, fearing
retaliation, have also left. The security forces have used the incident
to impose curfews. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse and top military
officials visited Trincomalee yesterday to “review the security
situation”.
The LTTE has carried out
communal provocations in the past. In this case, however, serious doubts
remain as to who was responsible. According to last weekend’s
Sunday Times, R. Rajarammohan, the chairman of the chamber of commerce
and industries, formally complained that the “police did not act
promptly”. Hatton National Bank branch manager K. Arumugam said
police did not arrive for 30 minutes, despite an instant bank alarm
connected to the local police headquarters.
The bomb blast could well
have been organised by Tamil paramilitaries or Sinhala extremists connected
to the JVP, JHU or other outfits such as the North East Sinhala Organisation
(NESO) which are active in the East and have close links with the security
forces. These groups, as well as sections of the military establishment,
are deeply hostile to the peace process.
The JVP has carried out an
aggressive campaign in the lead-up to the Geneva talks to demand changes
to the ceasefire agreement and a crackdown on the LTTE. Its political
bureau issued a statement on April 16 calling “everyone to rally
to free the motherland from separatist terrorism”. It insisted
that “the government and patriotic masses should not allow Tiger
terrorists to swallow the lives of members of security forces and unarmed
citizens under the name of false peace.”
The LTTE is under intense
international pressure to agree to talks and reach a peace deal to end
the country’s 20-year civil war. The US in particular, which regards
the conflict as a dangerous impediment to its growing economic and strategic
interests in the region, is pressuring the LTTE to negotiate. It has
one-sidedly condemned the latest attacks on Sri Lankan military personnel
and in January issued a veiled threat to back Colombo in any renewed
conflict.
At the same time, however,
the LTTE is desperate to shore up its eroding support among the Tamil
minority. After three years of ceasefire, the social conditions of working
people in the North and East have further eroded, fuelling discontent
over LTTE taxes and autocratic rule. As a result, the LTTE has stirred
up communal tensions and resorted to anti-Sinhala chauvinism to bolster
its standing.
Even if the second round
of talks in Geneva does go ahead, there is little prospect for any substantive
agreement. The inability of either side to make any significant concession
reflects the fundamental inability of any section of the Sri Lankan
ruling elite to break with the communal politics on which they have
relied for more than 50 years to divide working people and maintain
their precarious rule.