COLOMBO, 20 September 2003 — The Sri Lanka government and the island’s Tamil Tiger rebels are entering historic ground in their bid to permanently end the ethnic war, said Norway, which engineered a stop in the fighting last year.
Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgesen said yesterday a soon-to-be-released proposal by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was significant because it was the first such document from the rebels since shortly after the war started in 1983.
“Since the Thimpu principles, the LTTE has never presented a draft, never worked out a proposal and presented it... They are taking this very seriously, they are aware of the historic event it is,” Helgesen told Reuters. The rebels’ proposal will be on the crucial issue of power sharing.
Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan, was the site of the first peace talks in 1985, which, like three later efforts, ended in renewed bloodshed. Because those breakdowns always led to fighting, Helgesen said the fact the two sides were getting set to return to talks in the next several months — after the Tigers walked away in April — was historic.
“If the parties return to the table after six or more months of break without outright armed hostilities taking place, that is actually an historic event in the course of this conflict,” he said.
Talks that started one year ago, broke down when the rebels said they would not negotiate because the government had reneged on promises to help Tamil areas ravaged by the war.
But the truce, signed in February 2002, has held and become the longest since the start of the separatist war that has killed 64,000. The two sides and Norway are expected to start working out details for resuming the talks, probably in Europe, once the Tigers give the government a counter-proposal on power-sharing by mid-October.
“I think they will be far apart, but not so far apart that it wouldn’t be possible to go back to the table,” he said.
The government has already proposed a power-sharing plan for the Tamil-dominated north and east, mostly already under rebel control, that gives the Tigers wide powers over rebuilding and resettlement of displaced people, but not control over policing and security.
Helgesen said human rights and problems caused by the Tigers rejecting rulings by the Nordic monitors overseeing the truce would also be brought up once the talks start.
Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s party yesterday warned that rebels had sent 840 suicide bombers to unleash a wave of attacks if and when the peace process breaks down. The People’s Alliance, which is the main opposition in Parliament, said it had information from military intelligence and its own research that the guerrillas were preparing to mount attacks.
“The country is sliding toward a dangerous situation,” People’s Alliance legislator Mangala Samaraweera said.
“The next two months will be very crucial. We have information that the Tigers are preparing to unleash violence.” Samaraweera said the LTTE was preparing to stage simultaneous attacks in the towns of Batticaloa and Trincomalee in the island’s east.
