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The Rajpal Abeynayake column

If you were glib you'd probably say that the gloves were off at the Geneva peace talks. Team leader Nimal Siripala de Silva did not use exquisite turn of phrase when he said "the ceasefire is against the constitution of Sri Lanka". He deadpanned the words, devil-may-care almost, With one sentence, he sheared off the artifice from the peace process. That's a game thing to do. But it is not politically correct, and its as if to play cricket by the rules of rugby.

But this peace process was getting nowhere perhaps without an injection of hard and unglamorous reality.

This signifies a climoatolgical change. Cold Geneva has seen a peace process come out from the cold into a real world in which authentic people talk - as opposed to wound up automatons saying pre-recorded nothings. It may not necessarily be the correct thing to do, but when everything has been tried before, what's left to do is to remove the pretence from the peace cavalcade, have the parties level with each other, and see where it goes from there.

Else, peace is a potemkin nightmare, a fantasy that feeds on itself while it feeds the appetite of the wire service for stories that keep bringing in more bucks by the column inch.

The peace effort was overdressed on both sides of the divide. Now it is stripped to bare bones, and transformed to a state in which Nimal Siripala de Silva could theoretically thump the table like Nikita Khrushchev did memorably during the Cold War, to be called a buffoon by the coldly partisan red-bating press of those times.

In Celigny, they decided too meet again, which had Erik Solhiem doing cartwheels saying that he is "elated" as the outcome of the talks was beyond expectations. For the first time in years, Solhiem looked the middleman that he was supposed to be in he scheme of things.

In previous peace sessions, we saw that it was difficult unbundling the two parties, and the middleman. Previously, the Sri Lankan delegations usually started on the Tigers' side, the Tigers were of course for themselves, and the middleman almost naturally fell on to the side that had already been occupied by the two main parties. So the Norwegians went along with the Tigers often with a big grin on the faces.

All the actors were intertwined in pro Tiger positions, and a super-glue remover couldn't unbundle this concatenation.

It could be said by naysayers, with some justification, that Nimal Siripala de Silva's opening assertion that the ceasefire was "contrary to the Sri Lankan constitution" was not totally astute, not entirely kosher if this process was religiously serious. But it did one thing, even if one chooses to see it as blunder, which was to put the other party on notice that on this Sri Lankan side, there was a wish to keep their heads unbowed, their chests forward - and their self-respect intact.

In chess terms, the move even if it could be classified a blunder, was something of a pawn sacrifice that was strategically calculated for long term reward.

Nothing in the United Nations is accomplished with excessive diplomatic lubrication; its a rue of thumb that parties involved in contentious problem solving in corporate Japan for instance need to take their face masks off, and meet each other in the hot tub or the sauna where they face-off like men who have nothing to hide, literally. The same principle was applied in gun duels, which came to be banned in the United States for instance, for good reason.

But, the duel served its purpose when operative, of squaring off tough men against each other without to much nicety getting in the way of their exchange. Memorably, there was one U.S Vice President who challenged a Secretary of State, or at least a gentleman who held such high office, for a duel by the Potomac. He shot the man dead, escaped to another state to avoid prosecution, and later ran for office and won despite everything. Indictment was finally served on him by the son of the man who shot him dead.

In Celigny things were not so out on limb, the atmosphere decidedly not that of a riverside duel. But, it was not sickly sweet and cloying either, no tree plating, and even the handshakes showed authentic body language with the parties not seen to be fawning over each other.

Against this authenticity that was displayed, we have the counterpoint that the President's hardline was grouted at these talks, and that it became a softline later to become a line that was drawn on sand. Certain personalities decanted that line of thinking by the bushel load, to a point where we could safely surmise that they would have run out of negative things to say had the talks actually broken down.

But, their prejudices apart, the talks didn't breakdown. The Sri Lankan negotiators live to duel another day, not just with the LTTE, but also with those who see the negotiations as a continued diminishing of the Mahinda Rajapakse doctrine.

Maybe they are justified in thinking on these lines. Certainly, Rajapakse has changed his positions - his line, hard soft or medium rare - has certainly changed positions on some issues, even diametrically.

If somebody is to say this is inconsistency, he is probably right. But that will be a case of being so focussed on one track in the peace process, at the expense of ignoring the other tracks on which the train may have got closer to its destination.. It's to see Mahinda Rajapakse's inconsistency, while forgetting that its also his political evolution.

Or, its something somewhat akin to what the Samaritans did in biblical times.

They waited and watched with sleepless eyes for those who laboured on the Sabbath day. They toiled twenty-four hours to catch violators and never realised in the melee that they were so busy watching, with the result they were the only ones violating the Sabbath to begin with.

Those who watched for too any negatives, were the only entities that were being negative about this peace process - an irony, because they fought the present rulers accusing them of being out on a limb and not being moderate. Now, they watch the present dispensation become moderate.

They are in a bind. If they say 'you are like us' they may also have to acknowledge that the peace is being won. So they have settled for saying "you are not like what you were supposed to be." But didn't they say, all along on the campaign trail, that "we are better, you got to be more like us?" If you think you have been tricked into losing, I say, you have to learn to live with it.

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