With the murder of its respected Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar fresh on its mind, the Sri Lankan administration of President Chandrika Kumaratunga is clearly wary of fresh talks with Tamil Tiger rebels they believe carried out the assassination.
Thus it has rejected a rebel suggestion that new talks be held in Oslo to review cease-fire violations and hopefully push the peace process forward. Private government briefings indicate several reasons for this stance. One is that holding high-level formal negotiations with Tamil rebels outside the country so soon after Kadirgamar’s slaying would look like the authorities were bowing to violence. Tamil Tiger protests that they were not responsible for the foreign minister’s death are simply not believed in Colombo, not least because similar denials of other crimes have later turned out to be lies.
There is also the suspicion that the Tamil rebels would use formal talks in Oslo to launch a new campaign for international sympathy. The Sri Lankan government does not want outside intervention in its affairs. Indeed the presence of Norwegian peace negotiators since 2002 has been acceptable purely because the Norwegians have no political axes to grind. They are anxious only to bring the two sides together to establish a lasting peace through quiet and patient mediation.
The government is therefore demanding that when it talks to the rebels, it will be on some neutral ground in Sri Lanka itself. While this position is understandable, it carries much danger. The cease-fire, which has at times been honored in the breach by both sides, is now over three years old. It began in 2002 when the hard-line Tamil demand for a separate state was abandoned in favor of an autonomous region. Since then talks have nibbled away at the nature of that autonomy and the security guarantees that would protect that region from intervention from the government in Colombo.
Any dialogue to end a conflict as bitter as that in Sri Lanka which has cost over 60,000 lives since 1983 requires a modicum of trust and goodwill. Unfortunately serious damage was done to relations in the wake of the tsunami that killed 30,000 people on the east coast of the island. Muddle and foot-dragging meant that it was not until this June that agreement was reached on the sharing of $3 billion of aid between the devastated Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim communities. The unacceptable six-month delay once again highlighted the bitter divisions in the country. The resignation of the Sinhalese nationalist JVP from the governing coalition in protest at the settlement for the Tamils was as ugly as it was unfortunate. Unlike the Indonesian government with its rebel province on Aceh, the Sri Lankans failed utterly to use the catastrophe of the tsunami to advance the cause of peace with a massive humanitarian initiative that ignored ethnic rivalries.
The plain fact is that both sides in this conflict need to get talking again and rebuilding trust and goodwill. The location of these talks is immaterial. The determination to hold them is not.
