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| Sunday, 22 January 2006 |
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Acid test of Solheim's diplomacy by Ranga Jayasuriya The acid test of the diplomatic clout in the Sri Lankan peace process of Erik Solheim, the Norwegian International Development Minister lies ahead, when he arrives in the island tomorrow. Indeed, The former peace envoy, now the Minister in charge of Norway's role in the Sri Lankan peace process is here on a "make or break visit". The future of the ceasefire agreement is dependent on his diplomacy. Mr. Solheim will hold talks with the President, the Peace Secretariat and Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, before he visits Kilinochchi on Wednesday (25) for talks with the Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran. This meeting with Prabha, will be decisive and as LTTE political commissar S.P.Thamilselvan said, Supremo Prabhakaran will convey his stand in clear terms. Solheim will also meet United States Under Secretary of Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns, who will visit Colombo on the final leg of a tour to UK, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Norwegian Ambassador in Colombo, Hans Brattskar last Tuesday visited Kilinochchi for talks with Thamilselvan as a prelude to Solheim's meeting with the Tiger supremo who will be flanked by his theoretician Anton Balasingham. "It is the ground realities that would dictate the process forward," Thamilselvan told reporters after his meeting with the Ambassador. And the London based LTTE chief negotiator will travel to Kilinochchi tomorrow via the Katunayake International Airport to provide counsel to the Tiger chief. The Tigers, pointing to security concerns, rejected the Katunayake International Airport (KIA) as a compromise venue for the peace talks, when suggested by the Norwegians. But, interestingly enough, same concerns do not seem to have an impact on Balasingham when he travels via KIA. This proves the point, we reiterated many a time that Tigers' quest for legitimacy and recognition against the sovereignty of the Sri Lankan State is the major stumbling block which has made proposed ceasefire talks a nonstarter. This week LTTE official newspaper Tamil Guardian in its editorial cautioned the Tamils to brace themselves for difficult times ahead. "It remains to be seen whether Sri Lanka will agree to hold talks in Oslo or continue to prioritise its insistence that LTTE officials be excluded from Europe over stepping the slide to war," it said. It added that," the Tamil community, now under widespread and sustained harassment by the security forces, is as anxious for peace as any of the observers. But by peace we mean a genuine return to normalcy - not just the doldrums that the peace process was drifting to a few weeks ago". "In other words, we want the long overdue implementation of the normalcy clauses of the February 2002 ceasefire: the disarming of the Army-backed paramilitaries, the withdrawal of Sri Lankan security forces from our homes, schools, places of worship and other public places, the lifting of the restrictions on fishing and farming, and so on. This is not some radical new concept - the Tamil community has asked for this repeatedly for four years now, to no avail". LTTE proxy Tamil National Alliance and LTTE sympathizers of all hues are all united in this proposition that the government should talk peace under the terms of the LTTE, which has the dubious honour to be included in the list of foreign terrorists organisations in a number of countries including the United States, Britain and India. But, none of the apologists of the LTTE has ever been heard of calling for the flexibility on the LTTE's part, especially when the Rajapakse Administration has offered to go to an Asian venue, in contrast to the position of its predecessor that the talks should be in Colombo. This lopsided attitude of the apologists of the LTTE and some international actors, unfortunately the conduct of the Scandinavian truce monitors is sometimes bordering this, will only perpetuate violence perpetrated by undercover LTTE cadres, rather than abating them. The SLMM has so far failed to make an explicit ruling on the LTTE's involvement in the recent attacks on the security forces, barring its vaguely worded statement that "...LTTE involvement can not be ruled out (in the attacks) and ...LTTE explanation is unacceptable". The SLMM spokeswoman Helen Olafsdottier was quoted as saying in the Associated Press, "when are the two parties, the government and the rebels going to wake up?" Having placed the government along with the Tigers to share an equal blame, not only does she exonerate the Tigers from their responsibility in attacks which bore all the hallmarks of the LTTE, but also paints an utterly distorted picture of the prevailing situation. The dilemma of the SLMM is understandable; the SLMM has been forced to soft pedal the Tigers for the sake of a continuing engagement with the LTTE. Norway does not need to sour its good offices there by disrupting the engagement with the LTTE by acting tough against the ceasefire violations committed by the LTTE. The catchy phrase in the vocabulary of the truce monitors is that "we are not a police force". What is painfully clear right now is that the SLMM by being soft on the LTTE for the sake of the peace process has, unfortunately, opened up new avenues for the LTTE to get away with a long list of ceasefire violations. This week Human Rights Watch in its latest report said the LTTE was killing political opponents at an alarming rate, one killing per day. This is a stark pointer to the need to broadbase the membership of the SLMM, adding some Asian neighbours alongside with the existing member states: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Even though, President Rajapakse has long suggested such a measure, given the present context, its implementation, which should be agreed upon by the LTTE also, is unlikely to happen in the immediate future. And till then the SLMM has to cope up. SLMM chief Hagrup Haukland told the Sunday Observer that during his meeting with Solheim, he would stress the need for a direct dialogue between the security forces commanders and local LTTE leadership in order to de-escalate the prevailing tension. The government earlier ruled out local level dialogue after a tractor transporting soldiers were blown up in a claymore mine explosion, the first in a series of such attacks against the security forces by the under cover LTTE cadres. Indeed, it was the LTTE which first suspended the low level dialogue citing an alleged army collaboration with the Karuna faction. Haukland however says that a low level dialogue between the two parties will help to de-escalate the tension. Civilians are the ultimate victims of the LTTE orchestrated violence. Understandably, the limited counter insurgency operations conducted by the security forces have made inconvenience to public. The reports of harassment can not be ruled out as plain propaganda of the LTTE sympathizers. And civilian casualties in the cross fire and in retaliation by the security forces to LTTE attacks are also on the increase. That is exactly what the Tigers planned, when they stepped up attacks against the security forces using civilians as a shield. The Security Forces perhaps can have some insights from a recent statement issued by the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna). "Our monitoring of LTTE behaviour from the early 1980s... shows that the thrust of LTTE politics is never to defend the people or secure their welfare,but to work towards making them fodder for military gain and propaganda," the UTHR(Jaffna) said in a statement issued on December 27. |
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