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Confessions of an ageing guerrilla

Nirupama Subramanian

Velupillai Prabakaran has foreclosed the possibility of reviving Sri Lanka's peace process

FOR YEARS, analysts only guessed that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam used ceasefires, peace processes, and talks as tactics to further their cause of establishing a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka. Or as someone put it in Jaffna idiom, these were bus halts on the journey to Eelam. Now we have it from the Tigers' — in his speech on the occasion of the LTTE's "Martyrs' Day", the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabakaran, has made the admission that this is indeed the case.

The speech is a stunning confession of the bad faith with which the LTTE approached all peace processes, including the current, Norwegian-backed one. Forced into participation in the peace process by the international community, Mr. Prabakaran says it had its uses: it was a "viable means to secure legitimacy" for the LTTE; it was a way to "internationalise" the cause and win the "support and sympathy" of the international community; and it was to demonstrate that the Sri Lankan state would not offer a "reasonable" political solution.

"It was with these objectives that we participated in the peace process," he says.

The LTTE's idea of a "reasonable" solution, according to Mr. Prabakaran, is one that is based on the recognition of Tamils in Sri Lanka as a nation, not an ethnic minority, and of this nation's right to self-determination. It has been quite obvious since at least as far back as 1985 that Sri Lanka will not grant this demand, considering this is a step away from division of the country.

In all the peace processes that the Sri Lankan government has either participated in or initiated since then, the understanding — or, more correctly, the hope — has been that the LTTE will agree to a settlement for a federal form of government (as opposed to Sri Lanka's present unitary status) with extensive devolution of power to the Tamils.

Even though the LTTE rejected every federal solution offered, including the one by President Chandrika Kumaratunga from 1995 to 2000, there remained a strong belief among several sections — in the Sri Lankan Government and in the international aid and funding community — that the LTTE would finally agree to a settlement that would not constitute a threat to the unity of Sri Lanka. Despite all signals to the contrary, those who believed in this clutched at straws to give substance to their belief, usually seeing in the ambiguous tone of Mr. Prabakaran's annual "Martyrs' Day" speeches the evidence of a willingness to compromise. It even underpinned the Norwegian effort.

When Erik Solheim, Norway's special envoy for the peace process, returned after his historic meeting with the LTTE leader in northern Sri Lanka in November 2000, he told a packed press conference in Colombo that he had conveyed to Mr. Prabakaran that while the international community wanted to see a just settlement of Tamil aspirations, there was no support for an independent Eelam. The Norwegian peacemaker said Mr. Prabakaran seemed "interested" in and "serious" about a negotiated political settlement to the conflict, and the very fact of the meeting indicated that the guerrilla leader wanted to take the process forward. Such a hope continued even after the LTTE retracted from the Oslo Declaration of 2002, in which both the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE committed themselves to explore a solution to the conflict along federal lines.

But Mr. Prabakaran's most recent speech leaves no room for misinterpretation or ambiguity about his intentions. It is now more than clear that the LTTE interprets the phrase "political settlement" quite differently from everyone else. Even so, the newly elected President Mahinda Rajapakse, following Mr. Prabakaran's description of him as a "pragmatic" politician and a "realist," has offered to hold peace talks immediately.

In reality, by confessing to using peace talks as a strategy to achieve the LTTE goal, Mr. Prabakaran has foreclosed the option of reviving the process. His candidness is quite deliberate — after this, which Sri Lankan government can think of serious peace talks with the LTTE? Thus will come true Mr. Prabakaran's self-fulfilling prophesy that no Sri Lankan Government can offer him what Tamils want. Full circle.

So what to make of the offer that the LTTE will give Mr. Rajapakse until "next year" to come up with a "reasonable political framework that will satisfy the political aspiration of the Tamil people"? This is certainly no invitation for peace talks to arrive at the sort of "political settlement" that Sri Lanka may have in mind. More so since the new President has not even federalism to offer, having committed himself to preserving the unitary character of Sri Lanka. It is a clear ultimatum to the Sri Lankan state to give the LTTE what it wants, or it will take it anyway, at a time of its choosing.

For Sri Lanka, the only comfort at this stage is the India's firm opposition to the LTTE and the division of the island

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