BANGKOK: Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels would find themselves in an enviable position if the country's stalled peace talks do resume in the coming weeks.
At this point, right after the April 2 parliamentary election, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as the rebels call themselves, has in its favour elements to earn them stripes as the more willing partner in the fragile and complex peace negotiations that have been stalled since April last year.
That the LTTE rebels keen to play on these strengths became apparent this week, when they declared their intention to return to the negotiating table - and proved off-target for now the predictions by some opinion-makers that a return to war would be imminent after the vote.
The rebels have also made it known that Colombo's new team of peace negotiators will have to respond to their demand late last year for a powerful interim administration to handle affairs in the north- eastern region of the South Asian island nation.
"The Tigers want negotiations to start soon and to continue the process that commenced (in September 2001)," said Dharmaratnam Sivaram, editor of 'Tamilnet,' a website that reflects the LTTE's views. "They are not in favour of a new process being initiated."
The votes cast in favour of LTTE's positions at the elections will also be difficult to ignore, Sivaram explained during an interview. "This has definitely strengthened the Tigers' position going in for the next round of talks."
At this month's poll, the LTTE-backed Tamil National Alliance (TNA) won 22 parliamentary seats in the country's predominantly Tamil northern and eastern provinces, the areas where the LTTE had waged an over 20- year separatist struggle to carve out the state of Tamil Eelam.
Independent poll monitors, however, reported extensive vote- rigging and electoral fraud in Jaffna district, the heartland of the Tamils in the north. Besides the vote rigging casting doubt on the legitimacy of the LTTE's views in the Tamil areas, the other challenging issue facing the rebels is the split in their ranks. The Tigers, however, feel confident that they can overcome this unprecedented division between the northern and eastern military command.
Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, for her part, has a tougher road to travel towards new negotiations. That stems from her hawkish views toward the LTTE and the stalled peace process.
The political crisis Kumaratunga precipitated in Sri Lanka in November last year, which led to this month's election, bears this out. She fired three ministers of the governing party in parliament, the United National Party (UNP), after accusing it of conceding too much to the Tigers since peace talks started at a Thai naval base in September 2001.
According to reports at the time, Kumaratunga's move was a response to the proposals made by the LTTE to form an Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA) with autonomous powers - if necessary outside the country's constitution - to rule the north-east for five years.
The Tigers' proposal for an interim administration was groundbreaking in the history of Sri Lanka's conflict, which has left over 60,000 people dead. It was also the first time that the rebels had gone public with a concrete vision for the area they have been aspiring to control.
Under Sri Lanka's political system, the elected president enjoys more power than parliament. For over two years, Sri Lankans had to do with the president belonging to a left-of-centre political party and the majority political group in the parliament that formed the government belonging to a right-of-centre party, the UNP.
While the more pro-peace UNP never formally responded to the LTTE's interim administration proposal, the chance of Kumaratunga doing so as a condition to resume the peace talks becomes more difficult in the wake of the election results.
This is because the party she heads, the Freedom Alliance, not only failed to secure a simple majority in parliament but has among its coalition ranks the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) or People's Liberation Front - which upholds a mix of Marxism and a narrow nationalism that favours Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority.
The JVP, which launched two armed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s to topple the Sri Lankan state, has been openly hostile to any concessions by Colombo toward autonomy for an LTTE-controlled north-east.
"Retaining this coalition and seeking more support in parliament will be the major challenge for the government ahead of any peace talks," Betram Bastiampillai, Sri Lanka's former ombudsman, told IPS.
At the same time, this week's appointment of Mahinda Rajapakse as the country's new prime minister bodes well for resuming peace talks, added Bastiampillai, given "his record as a moderate and his constituency in the south, which is the Sinhala heartland".
Rajapakse, in fact, has already expressed his support for having Norway continue playing its role of peace broker in the Sri Lankan conflict. But the greater challenge for the Kumaratunga and her victorious Freedom Alliance is to project themselves as willing partners to peace talks and appear supportive of the LTTE's call to continue the process from where the former UNP government ended.
To do otherwise and appear more recalcitrant toward the Tigers would only give the rebels more reason to smile, since Colombo would come across as the bigger threat to the peace process. For the Sinhalese political establishment, the climate could not have got worse. Their current leaders, Kumaratunga and Rajapakse, may have to face being condemned, any which way they tread to meet the Tamil rebels.
It is little wonder then why some political analysts see clouds of gloom gathering over Sri Lanka. "There is an element of uncertainty and instability in the country," Jayadeva Uyangoda, head of Colombo University's political science department, told IPS. "We have entered a period of profound crisis." -Dawn/The Inter Press News Service.
