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Support peace moves

The break through in the peace process is a welcome development. Credit should go to both parties to the conflict that they decided to seek the path of negotiations instead of allowing the guns to decide the fate of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA).

We hope both parties will do their best to curtail violence, which had reached alarming proportions during the last two months.

The security forces, the administration, political parties, civil society organizations and the public at large should support President Mahinda Rajapakse's peace initiatives without reservations.

A conducive atmosphere is a sine qua non for the talks to begin on a promising note. It should be noted that patriotism at the present moment amounts to supporting the peace effort. No amount of pseudo-patriotic rhetoric could camouflage the subversive intent of those who tend to provoke the gullible public to oppose talks on flimsy grounds.

Learned monks and lay spokesmen of the JHU are making a hue and cry over the decision to hold talks in Geneva. They claim that this decision has conferred parity of status with the Government of Sri Lanka to the LTTE, as if this is the first time that these two sides have met together.

Resolution of intractable conflicts needs to recognise the equal rights of all combatants. It does not mean sharing suzerainty. This is the practice the world over. Even in a trade union dispute the employers and the employees meet as equal partners. There are no junior and senior partners in settling trade union disputes. This does not negate the proprietorship of the employers nor their power over discipline.

In fact such claims put forward by the JHU and others only display their naiveness.

A much more disturbing factor is the continued violence of illegal armed groups in the North East. The government has also noted the subversive nature of these attacks and has called upon the security forces to prevent them.

What purpose do these attacks serve? What is the objective of these paramilitaries? Obviously it is not the winning of political rights of the Tamil people. It is nothing more than a sectarian attempt to settle scores with their former comrades-in-arms.

While none would oppose them settling old scores they should not be allowed to sabotage the hard won opportunity for negotiations to strengthen the CFA and proceed to negotiations on substantive issues involved in the ethnic question.

The security forces should be not hindered in performing their duty of maintaining law and order whether it is in the North, South, East or West.

A continuation of such incidents of violence as that happened in Vadumunai will pose a threat to the Geneva talks. The LTTE has already warned that attacks would jeopardise the Geneva talks.

The government intends to have another session of the All Party Conference (APC) prior to Geneva talks. This would help achieve maximum consensus on the conduct of the talks. Therefore nothing by way of political acrimony should prevent the success of the APC.

The UNP has warned the government that any attempt to win over dissidents from its fold would make them reconsider their decision to support the government's peace moves. While the action of party dissidents is their internal affair, the UNP cannot afford to withdraw support to the peace effort of the government without endangering their mass base that supported devolution and negotiations.

It would also lead to more crossovers by disillusioned party MPs. Such an action would also earn the wrath of the Tamil community. Further the UNP would be exposed as an unreliable opportunist party before the world.

We hope saner counsel would prevail and the UNP would not revert to a repetition of a stab-in-the back tactics as it did in the case of the Year 2000 Draft Constitution, which they jointly worked out with the PA for several months.

The country expects more responsible conduct from all its leaders.

Palestine vote

The sweeping electoral victory of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the parliamentary elections in Palestine has sent shock waves over the Western world.

It is a serious indictment of the peace process as the two sides conducted it in the past.

Nevertheless the verdict cannot be interpreted as a vote against peace. What it means is the rejection of the direction in which the Palestinian Authority has been conducting negotiations under pressure from Washington, which was found to favour Israel.

It is time for a fresh start in finding a more viable solution to the Palestine conflict. We wish the Palestine people success.

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