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It would be a blunder to start talks with Prabakaran, says Devananda

COLOMBO: The moderate Tamil leader and Sri Lanka Social Welfare Minister K. N. Douglas Devananda on Friday compared the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabakaran, to Pol Pot and Hitler, and said it would be a blunder if the Mahinda Rajapaksa government were to initiate talks with the Tigers.

In an interaction with the Foreign Correspondents Association (FCA) here on Thursday night, Mr. Devananda, who has survived about a dozen assassination attempts by the LTTE, argued that there could be no solution to the ethnic conflict in the island nation as long as Prabakaran was alive.

“Till Prabakaran is alive, the LTTE will not agree to a political solution. He wants piece [of Sri Lankan territory] and not peace. Ninety per cent of the people in Wanni [rebel-held] area hate him,” the Minister said.

At the same time, Mr. Devananda was at pains to emphasise that the government should expedite the process for resolution of the conflict and maintained that a credible solution would compel the Tigers to come to the negotiating table.

“The tragedy of Mr. Prabakaran is, he cannot survive in a democratic set-up and environment. But if Prabakaran comes to the negotiating table genuinely, I will withdraw from politics. But the reality is, he won’t come and I won’t go,” he said.

The Minister claimed that Mr. Rajapaksa has agreed to make the “province” the unit of devolution of powers instead of the “district”, as proposed by his own Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) earlier. “A new devolution package, which would be an improvement on the existing 13th Constitutional Amendment, would be unveiled in two or three months’ time. The proposal will be officially made before the arrival of the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, in Sri Lanka for the 60th anniversary of the country’s independence in February next year,” he said.

A permanent political solution was not feasible immediately and his party had presented a formula with three distinct phases before the final solution. In the first stage, efforts should be made to evolve consensus among all concerned parties on effective implementation of 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

Mr. Devananda said the government should immediately set up an Interim Administration in the northeast.

“This administration must be political because only a political administration will be able to feel the pulse of the people and bring back normalcy after all these years of war. I want to be the head of such an administration”.

Separately, the military claimed that at least 16 cadres of the LTTE were killed in continuing fighting in the north in the past 24 hours.

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