International
Colombo silent, TULF backs LTTE proposal
By Nirupama Subramanian
COLOMBO, JAN. 8. Though there was no official reaction from Sri Lanka to a request by the LTTE that its London representative, Anton Balasingham, be permitted to live in Chennai, and for peace talks with the Wickremesinghe Government to be held in a southern Indian State, a leading Tamil party said New Delhi must consider the request favourably.
When contacted, the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, Tyronne Fernando, declined to comment on the LTTE proposal.
``We don't know anything about it yet, so why speculate? The Norwegians are coming here in a day or two. Let us take it from there,'' Mr. Fernando said.
A Norwegian team headed by the Deputy Foreign Minister, Vidar Helgesen, will arrive in Sri Lanka on Wednesday. The delegation will include Erik Solheim, who played a prominent role in Oslo's efforts in bringing the two sides to the table till he was sidelined by the previous Government. The delegation met Mr. Balasingham in London last Friday. He is said to have asked Norway to convey to India a request to allow him to move to Chennai from London with Sri Lanka's consent for the peace process.
The LTTE also wants the Indian Government to allow peace talks with the Sri Lankan Government to be held in Chennai or Bangalore. The Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) said India should consider Mr. Balasingham's request favourably in the interests of the peace process in Sri Lanka.
``Although technically there is a ban on the LTTE in India, they should not enforce it strictly in this case as a small help to the peace process. This is more of a humanitarian gesture because of Mr. Balasingham's ill-health,'' said the TULF leader, M. Sivasithamparam, who narrowly escaped being killed by the Tigers in 1990. Two other TULF leaders, A. Amirthalingam and V. Yogeswaran, were assassinated in that attack, which the LTTE carried out while talking peace with the then President, Premadasa. Now the party fully backs the LTTE as the only representative of the Tamils for peace talks with the Government. Mr. Sivasithamparam said that Mr. Balasingham's proposal would work if India would also provide the LTTE ideologue transport to shuttle between Chennai and northern Sri Lanka during peace talks, as he might not accept such assistance from Colombo for his own security.
Meanwhile, at a parliamentary group meeting of the United National Front (UNF) at the reopening of Parliament today, Mr. Wickremesinghe said Norway would soon draw up a formal document outlining a mutual ceasefire between the Government and the LTTE in order to structure the truce that is presently being observed by the two sides unilaterally.
As a sign of a growing rift between the People's Alliance (PA) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the leader of the Opposition, Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, today warned the Government in Parliament to guard against forces that were trying to disrupt the peace process. The JVP has begun a campaign against the UNF Government's truce with the LTTE and the Norwegian return to facilitation in the peace process.
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