Govt. must rethink position, says pro-talks lobby

By Nirupama Subramanian

COLOMBO, DEC. 24. Sri Lanka's hesitant peace process seemed to have hit another speed- bump with the Government decision not to reciprocate the LTTE's unilateral month-long ceasefire which is to take effect from midnight today.

As the prospect of more fighting loomed once again, political parties and organisations that favour early peace talks between the two sides said the Government must ``re-think'' its position and called for a more vigorous role by third parties to bring them to the negotiating table. The Government on Saturday said a ceasefire could be a ``consequent step'' that would arise when negotiations progressed to the ``mutual satisfaction'' of both sides.

In a statement authorised by the President, Mrs. Chandrika Kumaratunga, who is away in Europe, the Prime Minister, Mr. Ratnasiri Wickramanayake, and the Foreign Minister, Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamar, said that as the Government had clearly indicated its willingness to talk, ``further gestures of goodwill are unnecessary''.

The moderate Tamil United Liberation Front today expressed the fear that an ``inflexible attitude'' might de-rail the peace process. ``We think it will be extremely difficult for a guerrilla force to be engaged in serious negotiations on the one hand, and to be fiercely fighting on the other. Therefore, the Government should re-think its position, and both sides should endeavour to get over this impasse with the aid of the Government of Norway,'' said Mr. R. Sampanthan, party general- secretary.

The deputy leader of the main opposition United National Party, Mr. Gamini Athukorale, said if the LTTE's offer of a ceasefire was genuine, the Government's rejection of it would ``block the way for a political solution'' to the ethnic conflict. Some said the Government's rejection of the one-month truce revealed the extreme mistrust between the two sides.

``It looks like this mistrust is beginning to over- ride all objective considerations,'' said Mr. Loganathan Ketheshwaran, of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a private think-tank here. The one month of peace that the LTTE was offering could have been seriously considered by the Government as an opportunity for initiating a dialogue on a more durable ceasefire and to set the agenda for talks on a political solution, he added.

But the fact that the Government was unwilling to reciprocate showed that the two sides could not on their own travel the peace road beyond a certain point. Mr. Ketheshwaran said that unless the Norwegian facilitators became mediators, and civil society groups played a more active role, the peace process could get stuck.

The National Peace Council (NPC) said the Government should have accepted the challenge of ceasefire and put in place mechanisms to ensure that the LTTE did not use it to regroup militarily. ``At the moment the Government is speaking from a position of military strength,'' said Mr. Jehan Perera, media director of the NPC.

He said while the Government had reasons for mistrusting the LTTE, there was so much international pressure on the separatist group to talk that it would find it difficult to violate a ceasefire.

Bodies handed over

UNI reports:

The Sri Lankan security forces handed over 30 bodies of the LTTE cadre, killed in Friday's Kinihira operation, to the International Red Cross in Jaffna today, an Army spokesman said. Of them, 17 were child soldiers.

Though 51 bodies were recovered, only 30 were in a condition to be handed over. The spokesman said troops confronted a group of terrorists while clearing the general area of Navatkuli yesterday. After a brief encounter, 18 bodies of the Tigers were found, of which 14 were female and children.

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