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Observations by LAKSHMAN GUNASEKERA

"Not Tiger Balm," I reassured a Thai friend who had heard vaguely about 'Sri Lanka Tigers' descending on his country and had worried about the impact on Thailand's herbal pharmaceutical industry. "At most, they may carry cyanide," I told him. "Oh! No problem, our kids prefer 'speed' (slang for amphetamine stimulant drugs) and 'ecstasy' (MDMA, another of those)," he grinned. "Well, the Tiger Boys are believed to have dealt in heroin in the past, but that's history," I further reassured him when he looked worried again.

Over here, it's not banned stimulant substances that have concerned people but the make-up of the Sri Lankan government delegation.

Hopes rose briefly here over a news report that the principal parliamentary Opposition parties would be given places on the delegation to the proposed first direct talks with the LTTE to be held next month in Thailand. The new report actually gave a date for talks between Government and Opposition on the make-up of the delegation and its mandate.

These hopes were quickly dashed, however, when the Prime Minister's Office denied the report. People who had been looking for signs of a melt in currently frozen relations between the United National Front and the People's Alliance, and thought that that news report heralded the possibility of inter-party collaboration, are despondent once more.

Actually, inter-party collaboration need not mean a mix of party representation in the negotiating team itself. What the negotiating team requires is a careful selection of negotiation experts and not a set of politicians.

The delegation should consist of technocrats: those already experienced or briefed in the skills of political negotiation, and who will have their own technical specialisations pertaining to the different subjects that are to be negotiated.

Of course, it all depends on what these subjects are. All indications are that the proposed talks in Thailand will tackle some immediate issues arising out of the current cease-fire. These will certainly include military matters pertaining to the regularising of numerous aspects of the cease-fire situation. It will also include urgent administrative matters pertaining to social services, improvement of communications, rehabilitation, fiscal administration, etc.

It would be essential, therefore, that a senior officer represents the Sri Lanka armed forces. He would be necessarily briefed on the strategic and tactical interests of all three wings of the forces.

For example, still to be finalised is the most sensitive issue of the demarcation of the cease-fire line between the LTTE and the armed forces. It is not merely a question of ensuring that no territory is unnecessarily conceded to LTTE control as some Sinhala ultra-nationalist hawks may insist. Such an insistence is more to do with a crude ideology in which land is synonymous with body and territorial integrity is the same as bio-physical survival. More on the semiotics later.

Rather, military concerns are to do with strategic capability (such as depth of hinterland, ease of deployment, re-supply), geo-physical assets (such as ports, landing beaches, waterways as barriers), and demographic settlement patterns (control of populations and access to communities). They are concerns that impinge on the Sri Lankan military's long term capability to deal with the LTTE (cynics might say: to protect what's left of the State) and are as equally a priority as the so-called political 'core issues'. Civilian bureaucrats, let alone politicians, will not easily understand such vital military concerns.

Similarly, there are administrative concerns of a social and economic nature that have to be dealt with, such as the regularising of food and other supply systems, market access networks, economic development programme co-ordination, health, education and other community services, transport systems, and fiscal regulation.

A third item on the Thailand agenda is likely to be the most touchy issue of an interim administration for the North-East.

That all of the above are interconnected is obvious and they may be collectively termed the 'interim agenda'. This, then, following on from the successful implementation of the cease-fire, is effectively the second stage of the current peace process.

It is too early to speculate whether the third stage would comprise the political 'core issues' or whether more 'interim' matters crop up, or, whether the current second stage may need to be sub-divided into two or more stages.

There is no need therefore for politicians to pack the negotiating team to Thailand, unless the most competent and most involved (such as Ministers G.L. Peiris and Milinda Moragoda) go as the delegation leadership.

The rest of the team should be 'professional' negotiators with specialist capability according to the subjects in the talks agenda.

The collaboration between the two main political parties now jointly in state power has to take place at other levels. Most importantly at the level of a national inter-party consultative forum. This forum itself should be part of a larger framework of mechanisms that will guide the process of political negotiations. Such a forum, which is at political party level, will, on the one hand, inform the Cabinet and the Presidency.

On the other hand, it will inform a set of official committees of bureaucrats and military technocrats who must analyse every aspect of the talks agenda and come up with policy content and strategy for the negotiations. This is the kind of 'infra-structure of negotiations' that the recently set up Peace Secretariat is meant to oversee and facilitate. At the same time, the Peace Secretariat must manage the public communications that inevitably go along with the peace process.

The inter-connectivity of the issues in the 'interim agenda' of this second stage must also be seriously acknowledged. The setting up of an Interim Administration implies the demarcation of the geographical territory of its purview, the extent of its powers and the kinds of subjects it may deal with. Equally critical is the very political make-up of the administrative body who will be in power.

All indications are that the LTTE and its allies (including the TNA) will either exclusively make-up the interim body or will be in the majority. However that may be, the composition is something that is of a critical nature. For example, the fate of the ethnic minorities of the North-East - the Muslims and the Sinhalas - will, to some extent lie in the nature of the composition and powers as well as the territorial purview of the interim administrative body.

For all these reasons, there is the urgent need for the setting up of the 'infra-structure of negotiations' so that consultations, planning and research can be done. The Government's delegation to Thailand cannot proceed without such preparation.

The need for such preparation has a larger compulsion. That is, the way in which many of these issues of the interim agenda are decided will, to some significant extent, pre-determine the fate of the political 'core issues'.

From a Sinhala ultra-nationalist point of view, the way the 'interim agenda' is worked on and implemented will pre-determine the future strength of the emergent Tamil autonomous entity in relation the Sri Lankan-Sinhala entity the future ethnic-state balance of power.

But that is a crude perspective. That is a perspective which ignores the interests of the Muslims and the Hillcountry Tamils. At the same time, it ignores the interests of the Tamil people of the North-East as well, in terms of the nature of their political entity: the nature and degree of democracy, the kind of political-economy.

A larger, genuinely Sri Lankan and democratic approach must take into consideration these concerns. The content of the decisions taken in Thailand regarding the issues in the Interim Agenda of the second stage of this peace process, must be seen as having a bearing, of pre-determining, these long term aspects of the political core issues that must be tackled at a later stage. And it is only such a comprehensive and democratic approach that will prepare us for it.

While the core issues themselves need not be tackled right now, the interim agenda must be approached in this systematic manner so that it does not pre-empt the future. "Why do your people want to come to Bangkok to conduct political negotiations?" my Thai friend asked with a sly wink and a knowing leer. "It's not necessarily Bangkok," I protested hastily, very aware of Bangkok's plazas of ill-fame (the latest is named 'Clinton Plaza'!).

"They may hold the talks in Chiangmai or Kanchanaburi for all we know; or, Hua Hin or Phuket or Koh Samui," I pointed out, naming some of that country's world famous travel destinations noted for their spectacular scenery. "It's just that Thailand is one of our best friends, and is helping us out with a neutral venue that's conveniently nearby."

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