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The truce politics in Sri Lanka
A RELATIVE EASE marks the manner in which Sri Lanka is reported to have extended its own ceasefire in the military operations against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Although official Colombo's action is a sequel to the LTTE's earlier decision to extend its truce, the two sides tend to portray their initiatives as being essentially unilateral or independent gestures. As a result, the latest peace-promotive sequence may not signify the emergence of any new ground reality of mutual trust in the externally facilitated dealings between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan authorities. Outwardly, however, the unfolding politics of truce in Sri Lanka seem to signal that the LTTE and the new Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, are trying to build a certain comfort level in their ongoing interactions through Norway as the proxy power. The LTTE, which first announced a ``unilateral'' ceasefire for a month from last year's Christmas Eve, has now indicated its willingness to refrain from any activities against Sri Lanka's military forces for another month, up until February 24 this year. It is in this context that Colombo, too, has now decided to extend its own independent truce by a similar duration in its ongoing war against the terrorism-prone LTTE. A definitive feature of such apparent politics of responsiveness is that both Colombo and the LTTE continue to communicate their intentions only through Norway. This epitomises the intended premium on indirect diplomacy. Norway, on its part, seems to rely on its diplomatic experience of having created some space for negotiations between two entrenched antagonists in West Asia during the early stages of a peace process, which has nevertheless run off course today for a variety of reasons.
In the present Sri Lankan context, both Mr. Wickremesinghe and the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabakaran, appear to be seriously engaged in creating a virtual peace process through Norway's good offices as a designated facilitator. The distance that Colombo and the LTTE must cover before the virtual process can become absolutely real is not a matter of pure conjecture. It is significant in this context that Oslo, not official Colombo itself, is reported to have made the announcement about Sri Lanka's intention of extending its ceasefire in the present circumstances. Overall, though, Mr. Wickremesinghe appears determined to gain time to try and formalise a long-term ceasefire for the explicit purpose of resolving Sri Lanka's political-ethnic problem by engaging the LTTE in serious talks as one of the parties concerned. It is too early to conceptualise the final solution as some definitive Magna Carta of political rights and obligations as applicable to the minorities and the majority community.
Mr. Wickremesinghe's sense of urgency, reflected in his move to consider lifting Colombo's ban on the LTTE, is traceable to his desire to succeed whereas his political adversary and Sri Lanka's executive President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, had not been able to despite her willingness to chart out a truly visionary path in addressing the legitimate concerns of the minorities. The present international climate of anti-terror politics, too, is an encouraging factor in Mr. Wickremesinghe's calculus. In fact, if the LTTE is trying to appear reasonable at this stage, the reason has much to do with its tactical policy of wanting to trim its sails to the anti-terror winds on the international stage. That explains why the LTTE would like the official ban on it to go in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. However, given these realities, Sri Lanka's national interest will be best served by some meaningful cooperation between its Prime Minister and the President. Ms. Kumaratunga seems to have cautioned Mr. Wickremesinghe against moving forward without securing adequate ``guarantees'' from the LTTE.
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