Yet again, the path to peace in Sri Lanka is threatened by a major roadblock. This time the Tamil Tiger rebels have rejected the government’s proposed interim administration for the northeast of the island. Yet the very reason the Norwegian-brokered initiative to end the 20-year old civil war has been deadlocked since last April, when the Tigers broke off talks, is because they refuse to talk directly to the government, insisting instead the talking must be done by an interim administration. To complicate matters, they insist that the details of such an administration must be to their liking before they will discuss them.
It is depressingly familiar. As with the road to peace in Palestine, the devil is in the detail. It is all too easy to try to pre-empt negotiations with demands that if this or that is not done first, there will not be any talks. This is a dangerous tactic. The longer the situation drifts, the more likely is the collapse of the yearlong cease-fire, which both sides continue to observe despite the deadlock.
The Tigers are very well aware that the United National Front government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickramesinghe is trying its best to find a settlement but does not have a free hand. His relationship with President Chandrika Kumaratunga is fraught, not least because she and her People’s Alliance want revenge for their defeat by the UNF in the December 2001 elections. The more Sinhala-nationalist PA also takes the view that he is being far too generous to the rebels. Its allies, the hard-line nationalist JVP are even more hostile; they still demand the Tiger’s outright defeat. The now spurned offer of an interim administration is bound to make matters worse. There is a strong possibility that Kumaratunga will use this to dissolve Parliament and force a general election in the hope of winning it. If that happens, the cease-fire will be as dead as the 1995 one.
The Tigers have to realize that their best hopes of a settlement lie with Wickramesinghe. It was his victory in the 2001 elections that got the peace process going again. He is clearly sympathetic to their demands for power-sharing. He would not have made the offer of an interim administration otherwise. Yet instead, they seem to be hardening their stance, and in doing so imperil any chance of peace.
As for their demand of a fundamental overhaul of the peace process, it does not make sense. They are the ones who have undermined the process by refusing to talk directly to the government. An overhaul will take time. All it will do is delay matters further — and the only beneficiaries of that will be the opposition PA and those who do not want any settlement except on their absolutist terms.
