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| Sunday, 19 February 2006 |
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Features |  |
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Off to Geneva Punchline by Buffa No separation, this is a small country says the President. Now, why would the Executive President, Head of State, Head of Government and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces make what seems to be a platitudinous statement? To complement that it is equally well known that there is an armed group based in the Wanni jungles that is claiming territory on the basis of a homeland concept to set up a separate state of Tamil Eelam. While successive governments have offered to share power with the Tamil people in a newly configured State the LTTE warlord is in no frame of mind to share power even with other political groups of his own community. So both sides are taking wing to Geneva to battle it out. The team from the Wanni has taken off already to mix pleasure with hard bargaining and the Government team will follow suit. President Rajapakse has set the ball rolling saying that this is a new Government and a new President while inviting the other side to come up with something new. He is willing to meet the LTTE chief face to face in a path breaking attempt at reconciling this problem. Both sides have shown flexibility in deciding the venue for talks. It is neither Oslo nor an Asian country. The heat is down in the North and East. If the Ceasefire Agreement hatched in secret and signed in haste is flawed in certain areas that surely will be looked into. In a sense it has stood the test of time in preventing a hot war. The latest exercise is to extend that scenario. In the teams there are those who don many hats. Can someone pull a rabbit out of one of them? That would surely fit the President's recipe of coming up with something new! |
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