Sri Lanka ready for ceasefire with LTTE

By Nirupama Subramanian

COLOMBO, AUG. 29. A day after talks for power-sharing between the ruling People's Alliance (PA) and the Opposition United National Party (UNP) broke down, the Sri Lanka Government said that it would on its own invite the LTTE for talks, and was prepared to call a ceasefire before such talks began.

``Before the talks it is desirable to have a ceasefire if it is mutually agreeable,'' said the Foreign Minister, Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamar, at a press conference today to explain the failure of the PA-UNP discussions.

The Government had earlier rejected an LTTE demand for a ceasefire, saying it would consider this only when peace talks had progressed to a mutually satisfactory level. Mr. Kadirgamar said the Government had made a ``reassessment'' of the ``constantly changing situation''. At the time the LTTE made its demand for a ceasefire, the Government ``did not judge them to be serious''.

Asked if the Government now believed the LTTE was serious, Mr. Kadirgamar said: ``It is possible. But I do not judge if it is probable.'' There was currently a lull in the Norwegian facilitation, which could have been broken if the PA and the UNP had arrived at an agreement on power-sharing.

Mr. Kadirgamar, who was one of the Government delegates in the three-day deliberations with the UNP, explained the two sides had agreed that if an ``overall agreement'' was reached, they would jointly put out a statement inviting the LTTE for talks.

The statement, drafted by the PA, also included the declaration of a ``mutually agreed temporary halt to offensive military operations'', and the ``implementation of measures to alleviate any hardships and dangers to civilians''.

The LTTE had deemed these to be ``essential prerequisites'' for talks with the Government.

A PA press release on the failed talks with the UNP appealed to it ``to agree to issue this statement as a joint statement even at this stage so that, finally, the two major parties could raise the resolution of the ethnic question to the level of the highest priority that supersedes all other considerations of domestic politics on the national agenda''.

At its press conference to explain the failure to reach a power- sharing agreement, the UNP said it was always prepared to assist the PA to find peace and referred back to the 1997 British- brokered deal between the two, known as the Liam Fox agreement, on a bipartisan approach to the talks with the LTTE.

But there was no point in issuing a joint ``paper invitation'' to the LTTE for talks, said Mr. K.N. Choksy, a senior UNP parliamentarian who participated in the deliberations with the Government.

For the invitation to have some credibility, the two sides must also sit together and hammer out a constitutional alternative to Eelam that could be offered to the LTTE.

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