The Hindu : Ranil seeks to allay Sinhalese fears

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 01, 2002

International

International

Ranil seeks to allay Sinhalese fears

By Nirupama Subramanian

COLOMBO APRIL 30 . Under fire from Sinhala hardliners for appearing too concessionary to the LTTE, the Sri Lankan Government has been attempting to put on a more assertive face in the ongoing Norwegian-facilitated peace process.

The Sri Lankan Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, visited two influential Buddhist chief priests in the central town of Kandy over the weekend and assured them that he would not concede parts of Sri Lanka as a Tamil homeland, as demanded by the LTTE.

Mr. Wickremesinghe's assurance to the prelates followed a week of protests by monks, the nationalist-socialist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, the chief constituent of the opposition People's Alliance against moves by the Government to legalise the LTTE.

The two priests were among the signatories to a memorandum protesting the steps the Government had taken or proposed to take, as part of the peace process.

Mr. Wickremesinghe is reported to have requested the priests to ensure that the peace talks were held and no opportunity or excuse of Sinhala intransigence was given to the LTTE to disengage from the process.

In the last few days, the Government has also complained to Norway that a sea-plane transporting the LTTE political adviser, Anton Balasingham, to the Maldives, had flown south skirting the east coast over the high-security Trincomalee port instead of flying out on the same north-westerly route which it had taken to enter northern Sri Lanka.

The plane's flight path took the Air Force by surprise and Mr. Wickremesinghe has said that Mr. Balasingham's plane narrowly escaped being shot down.

The sea-plane carrying Mr Balasingham, his wife, two Norwegian officials and two LTTE cadres, is said to have flown low over the seas off Trincomalee during a two-hour blockade of a flotilla of Tiger boats eight nautical miles off the port city.

According to reports, the plane had not been given a specific flight path, but only a ``time corridor''.

Even so, the route it chose was unexpected, coming as it did during a tense stand-off between the Sri Lanka Navy and the Tigers at sea. At 720 nautical miles to Male, it was also a route that was about 200 nautical miles longer than the one it could have taken over the north-west coast, across the Palk Straits and out to the Maldives.

Mr. Balasingham, who describes himself as the theoretician of the LTTE, is expected to play a key role at the coming talks with the Sri Lankan Government in Thailand.

After spending a month in LTTE-controlled northern Sri Lanka, he was on the first leg of his journey back to London, where he and his wife live. As demanded by him, the Government had permitted him to fly in and out of northern Sri Lanka directly without touching an official port.

Officials said the LTTE was "absolutely mad'' to put Mr. Balasingham's life at risk by taking his plane over the naval blockade. The Air Force commander has also expressed surprise at the flight path. Reports said the Air Force, alerted by the Navy, was about to scramble to intercept the plane and was asked to stand back by the Government only in the nick of time.

The Government's new assertiveness was also evident in the naval blockade of the LTTE boats, even though the Navy's right to police the seas is not clearly written into the ceasefire accord.

Ignoring protests from the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance, the Navy has also designated the chain of islets off Jaffna peninsula, which have civilian populations, as military areas and disallowed the LTTE from entering them.

Under the truce accord, unarmed and out of uniform LTTE cadres can enter Government-controlled areas of the north-east for political work, but the Government holds the right to deny them entry into specified military areas. Amid reports that the Government was turning a blind eye to ceasefire violations, police arrested a top area leader of the LTTE in Batticaloa for an alleged offence under the Sri Lankan penal code.

Thurai, described as the political wing leader of the area was granted bail by the Batticaloa magistrate after he was booked by police for being in possession of army uniforms and ammunition.

Newspapers have also reported that the Government might not concede the LTTE's demand for a complete removal of the 1998 ban on the group before peace talks, and would instead offer a "suspension'' of the proscription for the duration of the negotiation process, making legalisation conditional on a political settlement.

The LTTE has said it will not accept anything other than a full removal of the ban, especially not a formula designed to make it seem less than legitimate in the eyes of the Sinhalese majority. But the difference in perception does not seem to have yet affected the confidence that peace talks will be held in mid-June in Thailand.

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