COLOMBO: International efforts to get the stalled Sri Lankan peace process back on the rails were underway this week after the rebel Tamil Tigers suspended their participation in the negotiations last month.

Representatives of Norway, which brokered the 14-month-old truce between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) ending 19 years of civil war, have arrived in Colombo, together with officials from Japan, the biggest aid donor, for talks with government and rebel negotiators to try to break the deadlock.

On April 24 the Tigers suddenly announced their ‘temporary withdrawal from negotiations’ five days ahead of the sixth round of talks due to take place in Thailand. The main reason given was their exclusion from an aid planning conference held on April 14 in Washington, where they are listed by the US as a terrorist organization. The withdrawal was also blamed on the Sri Lankan government delaying implementation of matters of humanitarian concern agreed at previous talks. The Tigers also said they will not attend a key donor conference scheduled in June in Tokyo.

But there are concerns that the rebels are raising the stakes by making their return to the talks conditional on the removal of key government military installations in the Jaffna peninsula — the northeastern war zone and traditional home of Sri Lanka’s 3.2 million Tamil minority — and on recognition for their navy.

The LTTE has rejected Colombo’s latest offer of de-escalation of the military presence in northern Jaffna as ‘incompatible with the 14-month cease fire agreement’. They have refused to accept a government plan to relocate two high security zones (HSZs) within Jaffna city to another part of the peninsula. The LTTE are demanding instead that all HSZs be removed from the war-ravaged populated areas of Jaffna, and the hundreds of thousands of Tamils displaced by the zones allowed to resettle the cleared areas. This is opposed by the Sri Lankan army who fear this will endanger the more than 30,000 government troops in Jaffna should the peace talks break down and the LTTE return to war.

The LTTE is also reportedly seeking recognition of the Sea Tigers — their fighting arm at sea — as its official navy and wants waters off the north and east of the island of Sri Lanka designated LTTE territorial seaway. The Sea Tigers want freedom of movement including the freedom to carry out training exercises involving the firing of live ammunition with the Sri Lankan navy reduced to the status of spectator.

Just how this will play with the Indian government, so far a silent observer of the peace process, remains to be seen. Japanese and Norwegian diplomats and a senior Sri Lankan minister have recently visited New Delhi to brief the government there on developments and to try to convince India to take a greater and more active interest in the Sri Lankan peace process.

The LTTE is playing its cards close to its chest. Its London-based chief negotiator, Anton Balasingham, flew to Sri Lanka on 3/4 May for talks with the Norwegian deputy foreign minister, Vidar Helgesen, ambassador Hans Brattskar and peace envoy Erik Solheim. Sri Lankan prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe government peace negotiators and the Japanese government peace envoy Yasushi Akashi were also involved.

Balasingham, who is the top adviser to the reclusive Tamil Tiger leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, was expected during his two-week stay to have discussions with Prabhakaran on ways of returning to the negotiations to achieve a political settlement to the 19-year-old civil war which has cost 65,000 lives.

The war began after a massacre of Tamils in 1983 when rebels, also angry over job and educational discrimination at the hands of the island’s 14 million Sinhalese majority, embarked on a bloody struggle for a separate homeland, a goal tempered in the current peace negotiations into Tamil autonomy under a federal system.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.