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Positive possibilities

By Jayadeva Uyangoda

The present ceasefire agreement and the no-war condition are most likely to be extended through the talks (between the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE) in Thailand.

WHEN THE Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) begin official and direct talks in Thailand on September 16, there are expectations built up by the two sides that this time they really mean business. Detailed media reports about the formal, ceremonial opening of the talks to be held in a popular holiday resort in Thailand give the impression that the two parties to the negotiation and their facilitators and hosts are treating the event with a studied measure of confidence. Although the relaxed build-up to the talks may camouflage the intensely complex nature of issues that come before them to sort out, the message being sent out by the UNF Government and the Tigers is that the Thailand talks will produce results.

In Sri Lanka and elsewhere, the dominant mood about the talks appears to be one of guarded scepticism and measured pessimism. Outside the ranks of the UNF Government and the LTTE, no person would want to stick his neck out to suggest any constructive outcome from the talks. A group of undergraduate students who accosted me at Colombo University the other day posed a question that many in India too would readily ask: "Will this be another peace debacle?" Negativist forecasting of the negotiation trajectory is quite fashionable among even professional analysts in Sri Lanka and abroad.

I tried to explain that unlike on past occasions this time there were better signs and conditions favourable for a positive negotiation outcome to emerge. The two sides, I argued, were determined to continue their political dialogue while sustaining the ceasefire agreement, even though their respective reasons for that line of action are quite different. Thus, the present ceasefire agreement and the no-war condition are most likely to be extended through the talks in Thailand. I further pointed out that the two parties might even sign a series of agreements — not one, big agreement — incorporating their unified approach to conflict-handling in the Northern and Eastern provinces of the island. I concluded by saying that the cumulative outcome of such an incremental approach to conflict management would be the institutionalisation of the LTTE's control and administration of the two provinces, followed by some significant re-organisation of Sri Lanka's existing state.

My students were taken aback by my last comment. Most Sinhalese and Muslims in Sri Lanka would react to that suggestion in exactly the same way. Judging by the editorial comments of the Indian press, I suppose many Sri Lanka watchers in India too would share that disbelief and anxiety. But, the emerging realities in Sri Lanka have the potential of turning the negotiation exercise into a programme of conflict de-escalation in the short run. Many who have watched the fine and subtle nuances of the UNF-LTTE political engagement during the past eight months appear to have missed the blunt point the two sides have been making: no return to war for some time to come. That message is perhaps the best guarantee for a measure of success in the long run too in the Thailand talks.

To elaborate the above point, an objective assessment of the current situation of the Sri Lankan peace process suggests that the talks on September 16 may not produce a grand settlement agreement between the two sides; neither would the parties be able to address, with any degree of finality, complex issues involved in the ethnic conflict or its future directions. However, the way the two sides have been approaching the negotiation exercise seems to suggest that they have reached a prior understanding for engagement through talks for a considerable period of time, may be a few years. In fact, a protracted no-war seems to be the most prudent path available to both the LTTE and the UNF Government. The agreements that the two sides are likely to sign in the months ahead will indeed give shape to institutionalising the LTTE's consolidation as a political and administrative entity as well. The coming talks are crucially important for the LTTE to establish this parallel identity of political legitimacy. And it is unlikely to miss this last chance.

Meanwhile, the LTTE goes to the negotiation table with a not so credible history in negotiation. In fact, it is better known as being a negotiation wrecker. On three occasions in the past — in 1987, 1990 and 1995 — the LTTE took unilateral action to terminate the talks and political engagement in a distinctly violent manner. The LTTE also publicly executed two leaders who negotiated with the group — the then Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and the then Sri Lankan President, Ranasinghe Premadasa. The current President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, survived an execution bid. The LTTE leadership will have to take new and greater steps to convince a sceptical world opinion that it really means negotiation to be an exercise in compromise-making, and not a funerary moment for Government leaders.

This is where analysts would closely scrutinise the opening statements made by Tiger negotiators at the Thailand talks. They will have to indicate in the first public statement at the opening ceremony that they will not resort to hard, positional bargaining — let alone war — but would rather be committed to transforming the talks into an engagement in principled, or problem-solving, negotiation. Quite interestingly, it is the Tigers, and not the UNF Government, who are called upon by world public opinion to prove their good faith in the negotiation process.

At some stage of the talks in Thailand, the issue of interim administration will come up for clarification, elaboration and finalisation. The indications now are that an interim process, centred on an interim administration, is most likely to take a concrete shape before the end of the year. As the UNF leaders seem to have understood it quite dispassionately, even a preliminary compromise with the LTTE would require allowing the LTTE to establish its political-administrative control over the Northern and Eastern provinces.

This is indeed a tricky issue which the Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, will have to handle with great care and wisdom. In negotiations, he will be giving a formal, concrete and institutional shape to some inexorable aspects of post-Independence Sri Lanka's political change and transformation, as facilitated, and even dictated, by a two-decade long war. In the same way that J. R. Jayawardene had to create Provincial Councils in 1987, Mr. Wickremesinghe is now called upon to give some institutional form to a historical process of Sri Lanka's conflict resolution and state formation. He will merely be the unconscious tool of an unfolding history, a history that is bitter and unacceptable to the nationalist elite in Sri Lanka. But, the signs are that that emerging history might be kinder to Mr. Wickremesinghe. The militant Sinhalese nationalist opposition that Jayawardene had to face in 1987 is very unlikely to re-surface in 2002. The suave and non-ideological Mr. Wickremesinghe has also proved that he is a cleverer political and conflict manager than most of his predecessors.

But the interim administration is not an unproblematic panacea for the present stage of Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict. As much as it can facilitate the consolidation of a productive negotiation process, it also has the potential of undermining the very process which will create it. The interim process has to be integrally linked to a process of continuing dialogue and compromise. It has to be made transitional and transformative. The gains of the interim process should never be used for reinforcing positional bargaining. As negative experiences in interim processes elsewhere demonstrate, an interim solution in Sri Lanka should not become a new microcosm for the overall conflict; neither should it give new life to old suspicions and enmities. Continuing dialogue through international mediation, in a backdrop of protracted ceasefire, can hopefully ensure a constructive outcome of the negotiation process that will be inaugurated in Thailand on September 16.

(The writer is Professor and Head, Department of Political Science, University of Colombo.)

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