Brickbats and no bouquets!

SLMM free from personal attachments - Major Gen. Lars. J. Solvbery

Sunday Meeting by Shanika Sriyananda

The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) which was 'inactive' in the recent past, has been blamed by several political parties for being biased. Saddled with their own shortcomings to replace monitors who had to leave, unexpectedly, after the EU stopped ban on LTTE. But now SLMM says that it can carry out a better monitoring service with the arrival of new monitors to bolster their team. In an interview with the Sunday Observer the head of the SLMM, former Norwegian Army Commander, Major General Lars Johan Solvbery pointed out the lack of a perfect mechanism to disarm under in the CFA as the major stumbling block.

He also said that the SLMM had the mandate to monitor violence which takes place in the land but not sea and air violations. "The role of the Sri Lankan government in safeguarding the waters of the country, is not included in the CFA and so, that is beyond our jurisdiction," he said.

Here are excerpts of the interview:

Q: There is a school of thought that the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) should be amended. According to your observations what are the weaknesses of the CFA?

A: Now the CFA has proved its survivability, may be, because of some of the weaknesses. I think that an efficient Ceasefire Arrangement should contain some sort of weapons control mechanism but in this CFA we do not have that and it is one weakness compared to what we could rather achieve.

And of course, a more efficient ceasefire arrangement could contain some sort of disarming mechanism. I think that is a point that this CFA has proved to survive situations where there are lots of violence.

Q: Don't you think the Tigers increased their air capability under the cover of the CFA?

A: Well, there are developments in capabilities over the last few years by both the parties to the CFA as far as we had observed. I think it is not fair on my part to comment on, because if you start commenting on one of these developments, there could emerge a different picture altogether. Five years have gone by and there are changes in the capacities of both parties for a number of reasons. No, I think that it is not my business to gauge their capabilities. It is always important to go back to the peace process. What is important to me is the way that the two parties are looking at it. These are all up to the parties concerned and it all depends on how the parties comply with the agreement that they have created. We are here to judge whether the parties deviate from the CFA for a justifiable reason. I think it is very important to be unbiased/neutral in this regard.

I cannot go into some of the details in the CFA. The CFA is not an agreement on disarming of any particular party. There is no mechanism in this monitoring process to keep track of military capabilities, which is not even seen in the rest of the world. Yes, there are changes.

Q: The clashes in the seas have also escalated and meanwhile the LTTE had carried out two air attacks. How do you assess the situations in the sea and air? Are these areas also taken into account when monitoring CFA violations?

A: It must be noted is that sea and air do not come under the CFA. The CFA concentrates on land situations only. The role of the Sri Lankan government in safeguarding the waters of the country is not in the CFA so that is beyond our jurisdiction.

Q: Do it you think that it is a drawback for the CFA? Does that mean that these violations do not go on record?

A: Yes, they are not covered by the CFA and it is the weak point and will remain a fact for the time being. We did naval monitoring during the first few years but abandoned it a little over a year ago because of security concerns, which is totally vital for SLMM because we are a team of unprotected and unarmed civilians. We do not have a peace keeping authority. We solely work on the security guarantee given by both parties. So the parties have to give us a guarantee, on which we totally rely on.

Even though the level of violence is high, we feel that the parties should realise their responsibilities. Now we have reasons to doubt that. Of course, we have realised that this will pose a danger when it comes to peace process. These are the reasons due to which we refrain from entering into combat zones purely because we are not trained or equipped to handle such situations.

The other thing that we have only a few monitors deployed in some of the districts for the last several months, because military operations are in higher gear. So, there is no security guarantee, when we need the guarantee from both the parties. So, as a precautionary measure we try to avoid such situations.

Q: How do you assess the present position of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA)?

A: The Ceasefire Agreement is of utmost importance for a number of reasons, especially when the CFA document is still being validated by both parties. There are lots of incidents happening, which are not in the true spirit of the CFA. The SLMM is here to keep a record and report. However, a framework, a sort of an institutional framework is a must, which may be used by the parties to the conflict whenever they deem it is necessary. In the absence of such an institutional framework there is no structure or set guidelines for an interaction between the two parties. CFA is the direction for them to interact.

Q: What do you mean by an institutional framework?

A: If you look back at the period before the CFA, years ago, there was no formal framework to base their relations on. The achievement of having such an institutional framework is in the document, which regulates the relationship between the two parties to a certain extent. To have that in place is a great achievement, where the parties have to be loyal to maintain that framework.

Q: There are arbitrary violations of CFA. What do you say to that?

A: I think it is quite clear that compared to the number of violations and the extent of it was what we saw during the first four years of its existence, but since then the number of violations from both sides have increased significantly. We know that there is an increase in the figure of the dead. That is recorded in our reports. We have recorded between 100 to 200 deaths during the first few years which has gone up to 5,000. So these increases are quite significant and it is also fact that both parties have launched large scale military operations.

On the other hand I think it is also important to stress the role assigned to us, under the then CFA. We are not here to pass judgements. We are here only to report on what both parties are doing.

Adherence to the CFA is a matter for the parties concerned. The SLMM has no right to interfere or make any moves to counter their actions.

Whenever we can, we look into complaints and try to make inquiries. More often, now, it is not possible for us to go that particular area due to security and other reasons. And, so we will have to limit ourselves to report what the parties were saying in verbatim. One has to realise that it is important in the future that someone is reporting what the parties had said about the incidents. So we think we are doing a vital job.

Q: There are some allegations that the SLMM activities are not effective. Do you think that it was because of lack of man power?

A: The strength of the SLMM is a cause for concern. We are a creation by the CFA and it means that the SLMM is created by the two parties but not by the facilitator or the international community. The SLMM has no supreme headquarters elsewhere in the world, like New York or Geneva. We are not part of any international organisation. We are a totally independent institution set up by the parties. This fact is a very strong survivability factor. So, that means that as long as the parties maintain their commitment to the CFA they also maintain the SLMM as a caretaker of the CFA. We are here to tell the parties on how they should behave according to the CFA.

We have a strong foundation, very independent and rather unique that way. We had to adapt to a situation that is changing or has changed. We have to face a situation called 'double imbalance' where there is a strong increase in the number of violations and to make it worse, had to cut down on the strength of the SLMM by half, by last Summer.

We had 60 monitors at the SLMM at the very beginning, but now it has halved to around 30. That was a consequence of the EU ban of the LTTE, whereby we had to do without monitors from the EU countries. They had to leave because their security was not guaranteed. The LTTE with a terrorist tag attached to it did not accept the monitors from the EU countries, Because of that reason we had to reduce our strength from the five countries to a meagre two. At the same time the situation got worse with an alarming increase in violations.

Simply we were not able to cover and document all these incidents. We had inquired and reported but were not able to investigate.

The number of violations have gone up drastically and it was not possible to cover all the incidents. In some districts there were six monitors but it had to be cut down to two. So we were not able to handle them efficiently. In addition to that, since late last year the security situation got worse. We had to limit our activities. For a short period the monitors were brought back to Colombo because they had to undergo re-training and re-organising security awareness programs because they are civilians. And we had to improve our internal skills. We have done that now, and we are back with 30 monitors in the districts but we are still not at full strength. Now we have improved our awareness. Still we are not able to inquire into most of the incidents due to lack of monitors. With the large number of violations added with security concerns we are unable to go to combat areas.

Now we are more capable to face the situation than we were earlier. We are better trained. We know what to do and what not to do.

Q: Does the SLMM have the mandate to monitor the LTTE attacks outside the North and East? What are your comments about the violations carried out by the LTTE in and around Colombo, specially targeting innocent civilians?

A: Yes. We have the mandate to monitor all over the island as a monitoring mission. We have inquired into some of those significant incidents especially in the metropolitan areas and sometimes we are allowed in and invited by the government. Sometimes we are restricted in our movements. If the parties do not want us to come, we will not proceed.

Q: You said that the SLMM is an independent organisation. So don't you have the authority to go and inspect independently without the approval of the parties?

A: This is the case. Because it is the freedom of movement from the beginning. This principle is very important to us. But when there is a high level of violence we have to respect that all the parties work for security reasons. You should not go there. Because there could be mines, unexploded bombs and there may be another attack. So then what we can do, is to protest but do not have authority to enter by force. When we are stopped by the police then we have no way of overruling their orders. And we have to obey that. We have to respect the fact that there are security reasons but may be not all the time. In order to have free and unbiased monitoring, freedom of movement is very important.

Q: There are allegations that the Karuna faction is more active in the East now. Does the SLMM report these violations?

A: For the SLMM there are only two parties, that have been created under the CFA. So we are taking care of the actions of the government of Sri Lanka, the security forces and the LTTE, its military and political wing. When it comes to other groups we do have a tricky situation in addition to our monitoring. We have to follow what is going on in this conflict between two parties. And we do report on incidents by other groups that affect the CFA.

Q: Do you have any figures about abductions done by the LTTE?

A: We have a lot of complaints under CFA connected to this. So we have our statistics and the data base. They are based on complaints submitted to the SLMM by parents, relatives. There are complaints on different perpetrators. These days we have hard time inquiring into these. We normally take down complaints and then we will direct these complaints to the relevant humanitarian organisations in the neighbouring areas to take care of the case.

Q: Some Tamil political parties blame the SLMM for being biased and that the SLMM report only violations made against the LTTE. Their complaints go unreported. What is your comment?

A: I have to assure that we are doing our utmost to be unbiased and we go to great lengths when it comes to checking our objectives as possible. We have realised that from time to time either party are discontented with our standings and conclusions. We will be criticised by either party on different occasions. There is no reason for us to be biased. No, I feel that we are not biased. I personally feel that there is no attachment to any of these parties.

We are doing this as professionals. It is also important to realise that the SLMM is here not to be a monitoring mechanism for the whole conflict and for the whole society of Sri Lanka. We are here to take care of this part of the CFA and taking care of two main parties - the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE. But around them there are lots of actors meaning political parties, movements and different groups belonging to Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. We are here to tell the two parties what they should do according to the CFA. I should not comment further. The only thing I can ensure is we are doing everything that we can do in order to be unbiased. And when there is a question about transparency we are trying our best to be transparent.

Pix By Kavindra Perera