July 10, 2008	Thursday	Rajab 6, 1429

COLOMBO: Very few will deny that Sri Lanka’s peace process is rigged with complexities. Fewer still will disagree that these complexities are getting more complex with every passing day.

Nearly three months after appointing a former LTTE guerilla now close to the government to the eastern province chief minister position, the UPFA regime has reiterated that any future peace talks would take place with the participation of all Tamil political parties in the country and not solely with the LTTE and have further demanded that the Tiger separatists disarm before approaching the discussion table.

“If the LTTE is to represent the Tamil people they will have to give up terrorism. Until they do so our discussions on a political solution will be with Tamil parties who are in the democratic stream,” government defence spokesman Minister Keheliye Rambukwella told Dawn.

On Tuesday, the Colombo-based Daily Mirror reported Government Peace Secretariat chief, Rajiva Wijesingha as saying that the government has conveyed to the LTTE that it must leave aside its weaponry for future peace talks. The LTTE has long since ruled out such a possibility stating that it would enter negotiations only with the government. Sri Lanka’s largest parliament represented Tamil political party, the pro LTTE Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is not yet actively involved in the country’s peace deliberations.

Meanwhile, the return of the former LTTE strongman for the east Vinayagamoorthy Muralidaran alias Karunaafter serving a 6-month jail sentence in Britain for travelling to that country on a false passport, is bound to pull Sri Lanka’s peace process in yet more various convoluted directions.

Karuna, who heads the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), the para military group cum political party left Sri Lanka’s shores end last year after a series of clashes within the group. In the absence of Karuna, the TMVP was headed by the now chief minister of the eastern province Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, alias Pillayan. Karuna was arrested by British authorities in November 2007 and jailed in January 2008, for entering Britain on a Sri Lankan diplomatic passport issued under a false name.

Now with his deportation back to Sri Lanka last Saturday, the tensions within the TMVP lie volcanically dormant and likely to explode at any given time adding fuel to the 30-year old war that the country is being consumed by, analysts predict.

Sources say there is likely to be a power struggle within the TMVP as to who represents the party at the All Party Representative Committee (APRC). “It would not have been a problem for Karuna eight months ago to have Pillayan representing the APRC from the TMVP since his focus then was getting to Britain. But now with his deportation back to the island his aim would be shifted back to personal political goals in Sri Lanka,” a source close to the TMVP said. Soon after his return to the country last Saturday, Karuna told the local media he hoped to be a “good politician” and intended to meet President Mahinda Rajapaksa during the next few days to discuss his future plans and issues that ‘needed to be ironed’.

He had also alleged that there is an attempt by certain ‘government officials’ to split the TMVP. While analysts say there might not be immediate repercussions in the peace front stemming from the internal upheavals of the TMVP, observers say that in the long-term there are bound to be issues that will continue to further slow down the country’s search for a viable power devolution.

“If the TMVP does split there will be a host of other issues to contend with,” one analyst opined weeks after critics said the government had pushed itself into being obliged to give the TMVP deputy leader Pillayan the Eastern district chief minister post because of the role played by the ex-guerilla and his group in helping the government military oust the LTTE from the east last year. The TMVP-government coalition also won the eastern provincial council elections held last May amidst allegations of mass scale rigging and impersonation. Both Karuna and Pillayan are accused of gross human rights violations, which includes the recruitment of child soldiers, killings, abductions and harassment of civilians in the east, and human rights activists say they want these matters looked into before they are made stakeholders in peace negotiations.

Peace lobbyists add that the government cannot avoid talking to the LTTE if there is to be a constructive end to the bloodshed in the country while pro LTTE groups are of the opinion that the higher the TMVP clan go in government circles the remoter the chances become of the Tamil Tigers contemplating negotiations. However, government argues that the TMVP is a positive factor where it is proved that ex-Tigers can join the democratic process and is an ‘example’ for the LTTE to follow.

The latest call for peace came from the University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR) which pointed out in its latest report that Sri Lanka’s inability to resolve the ethnic conflict poses grave dangers and stated that Tamils firmly believe in the “justice of the liberation struggle” even if they don’t admire the Tamil Tigers. “The prospect of a (political) settlement is now prisoner to the government’s obsession with its Sinhalese extremist agenda as the only means of prolonging its hold on power,” the report said adding the LTTE sees this as its ‘best hope’ and would use any means, including the use of child soldiers, to prolong the war until the south plunges into chaos.