COLOMBO: Following the failure of the West-backed and Norwegian-brokered peace bid, Sri Lanka’s Tamils as well as the Tamil Tiger rebels may be looking towards India to play the role of peace facilitator. The Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka has sent “favourable signals” for India's role as a ‘mediator’ to end the ethnic conflict in the country, a Sri Lankan Tamil Minister was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying on Monday in Tiruchirapalli.

P Chandrasekaran, Sri Lankan Minister for Community Development and Social Inequity Eradication, who is also the leader of the Upcountry People's Front, an organisation representing plantation. Tamil workers of Indian origin had claimed that the LTTE had renewed interest in Indian intervention.

The statement by Chandrasekaran comes in a background of significant support in Sri Lanka, especially by the Tamil community for a greater Indian role on the island.

A recent survey by the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) conducted in all but the war-torn northern province has found majority support from all communities except the Sinhalese for Indian participation in peace negotiations with the LTTE guerillas. Only 47.8 per cent of the Sinhalese backed that tactic whereas 62.9 per cent of Sri Lankan (indigenous) Tamils; 61.1 per cent of Indian-origin Tamils; and 70.6 per cent of Muslims sought India’s assistance in peace talks with the Tamil Tigers.

Analysts meanwhile say that the much publicised meeting weeks ago between the late Rajiv Gandhi’s daughter Priyanka, and Nalini Sriharan who is serving a life term for her role in the assassination of the former Indian Prime Minister might lead to the LTTE being more open to any Indian involvement in taking bloodied and tattered Sri Lanka back to peace.

Nalini is the only surviving member of the five-member squad that was recruited to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi. Subha, the suicide bomber of the LTTE carried out the attack at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991 killing Rajiv Gandhi and 17 others on the spot.

The assumption among diplomatic sources and analysts is that the initially secret visit by Priyanka to the Vellore prison would have direct and indirect repercussions where Sri Lanka ’s long drawn ethnic conflict is concerned. The Sri Lankan media have indicated that Priyanka’s meeting with Nalini would send ‘signals’ to the Tamil Tiger rebels that the past is forgotten, a chief request by the LTTE leader Vellpillai Prabhakaran at his famous press conference six years ago following the ceasefire with the then United National Party (UNP) government.

As observers point out this would show that Lanka’s neighbour is willing to considerably shorten the distance it maintained in the island’s arduous attempt to instil a political solution that might end the increasingly bloody war with the Tamil Tiger rebels.

The war between President Mahinda Rajapakse’s government and the LTTE saw a new phase early this year with the government formally annulling the ceasefire agreement signed in February 2002. Since then the country has reached a pinnacle of violence with the LTTE increasingly targeting civilians in the capital Colombo and its environs. So far this year nearly 80 have been killed in train and bus bombings while hundreds have been seriously injured. But sources in the north say the rebels may be running out of steam in the face of steady military attacks targeting the de facto state administered by the guerillas.

“If there is a serious and genuine move by India to bring about peace in Sri Lanka, the LTTE is likely to respond,” a pro LTTE Minister of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) opined.