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| Sunday, 6 June 2004 |
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India to play greater role in peace process by Ranga Jayasuriya India is to play a greater role in the peace process in an apparent policy shift in New Delhi, which has, hitherto, been a cautious observer on the developments in its Southern neighbour. After meeting with his Sri Lankan counterpart Lakshman Kadirgamar, Indian External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh said that New Delhi would step up defence cooperation with Sri Lanka and would play a role in reconstruction work in the North-East. "We will take this forward and fix the dates," he said referring to the proposed defence pact. Indeed, a defence pact with India has been in the priority list of Colombo's political establishment since the Wickremesinghe Administration. Such an agreement was viewed as a deterrent against the Tigers and also a security guarantee from the world's forth largest military. "....India is committed to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and the unity of Sri Lanka in a Federal system and the Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh) has said that we very much hope that a peaceful, negotiated solution will be found which will maintain the unity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Sri Lanka and satisfy all sections of the people of Sri Lanka," Singh was quoted in The Hindu as saying at a joint media conference after meeting Kadirgamar. This pronouncement by the Indian External Affairs Minister is amply illustrative of India's policy on Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict adopted by both the BJP and Congress governments. Over the past several years, New Delhi has made it clear that she wants ethnic and religious minorities in Sri Lanka to be given equal treatment, a place equal to majority Sinhalese, while stressing that any solution should respect the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. (New Delhi, no longer, plays the champion of Sri Lankan Tamils, which role it played in the 80s). India's concerns are interlinked with her own security concerns. New Delhi is aware that a separate Tamil Eelam off the Palk Straits, would be an incentive to Kashmir separatists and equally to a number of armed insurgents in Assam, Nagaland, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh. This was cited as one reason when New Delhi extended the ban on the Tigers for a further two years. Equally important, even though Tamil Nadu is well integrated to the Union Government, the possibility cannot be ruled out of an independent Tamil Eelam fuelling separatist sentiments among the 100 million Tamil population there. Indian political commentators were among the first to be alarmed by the LTTE's proposals for an Interim Self Governing Authority, which sought to set up a virtual independent state in the North-East of Sri Lanka. Changing attitudes Having observed India's changing attitudes to the Tigers, whom India groomed, trained and armed and also having realised mutual gains of close relations with India and repercussions of harming India's geo-political interests, successive Governments in Colombo since the early 90s have been committed to closer relations with India. As Kadirgamar put it, Indo-Lanka relations had now reached a point of `irreversible excellence'. This was the second visit of Minister Kadirgamar to New Delhi since the election win of the UPFA. Soon after the UPFA came to power, he flew to New Delhi to meet India's then External Affairs Minister of the Vajpayee Government, Yaswant Singha. Kadirgamar had long been stressing the importance of offering India a greater role in the peace process. His thinking is, indeed, representative of a growing body of opinion in the South, which supports an Indian role in the peace process for reasons ranging from closing the door for western influence on the peace process - which is perceived to be too internationalised - to benefiting from India's own security interests which in many ways go together with Sri Lanka's own. The UPFA's junior partner, the JVP has been demanding the replacement of Scandinavian truce monitors with Indians. The People's Alliance favours a significant Indian role in the peace process. Even the Wickremesinghe Administration was cautious enough to update New Delhi on the developments on the peace front on a regular . Since J.R. Jayawardene's colossal foreign policy blunders which irritated India, successive Governments in Colombo have been very much aware not to harm India's geo-political interests. Equally important, with India emerging as an economic giant, Colombo is gradually realising that toeing India's line would be more beneficial - economically, politically and diplomatically - than toeing the US line. Donor meetings Moving to the donor follow-up meeting in Brussels; the donor co-chairs, Norway, Japan, EU and US, meeting on a routine follow-up conference to the Tokyo donor parley urged the two parties to resume peace talks, with an apparent warning that the delay would cost promised assistance. "They noted that, with so many other demands on donors, donor attention and funding might go elsewhere unless the peace process makes progress," the co-chairs said in a media release issued by the European Commission's Directorate General for External Relations. The four co-chairs underlined that promised donor assistance is linked with the progress stressing that "there should be no drift and no delay in resuming and taking forward the peace process". The underpinning of the routine follow-up co-chairs meetings was to keep the international attention on the peace process by giving the donors a stake in it. It was also expected of them to be a part of an international safety net, which the Wickremesinghe Administration hoped would be a deterrent against the Tigers going back to war. But it is also clear that the interest and commitment of the international community to a peaceful solution would be proportionate to that of the Government and the Tigers. |
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