COLOMBO: The Tamil Tigers are still officially “at war” with the government of Sri Lanka but that has not stopped the two sides sitting down to agree a federal solution to the island’s ethnic crisis. It is a solution that leaves the government with the difficult task of convincing other ethnic groups and parliament to accept the deal. Some observers think the government is doomed to fail.

The third round of peace talks in Oslo ended on December 5 with the Tamil Tigers — officially the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) — agreeing to a federal structure including regional autonomy and internal self-determination for the traditional homeland of the Tamil-speaking people. Opponents of the agreement fear this is a step on the road to creating a separate state.

Now the Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has to convince other groups in the island state that the agreement will bring stability and will not lead to a separate, Tamil-run state. The traditional homeland for which the LTTE has waged a campaign of suicide bombings and murders, includes the east and north of the country. More than 60 per cent of the population of the eastern area are Muslims and Sinhalese who are wary of being ruled by a Tamil administration.

The constitutional changes will require a two thirds majority in Parliament and some observers think Wickremesinghe will find that impossible to achieve. They fear such a failure would leave the LTTE free to say their negotiated settlement has been rejected, and to resume their “liberation war”.

The talks were organized after the LTTE called a ceasefire — although not an end to hostilities — in February. Since being recognized at the previous peace talks sponsored by Norway, the LTTE feels under less pressure to renounce violence, despite having been proscribed as a terrorist organization by several nations. Indeed, Anton Balasingham, leader of the LTTE delegation, told a press conference that the time was not yet right to renounce violence and terrorism as the US had urged.

Wickremesinghe had gone to the Donor Forum for the reconstruction of the war-ravaged north and east of the country, held in November, also in Oslo, with the hope of obtaining between $200 million and $500 million in pledges. But in the end he had to accept just $70 million.

Those attending the Oslo Donor Forum included the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, all countries that have proscribed the LTTE as international terrorists. Other participants included Japan, China, Russia, Germany and other countries of the European Union. A significant absentee was Sri Lanka’s closest neighbour, India, where the police still want to question the LTTE leader in connection with the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

The most senior foreign participants were the United States Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, and the UK Minister for International Development, Clare Short, representing nations that were the first to name and ban the LTTE as a terrorist organization.

There was considerable opposition in Sri Lanka to the presence of the Sri Lankan government at the Oslo talks, especially after a 200-year sentence of rigorous imprisonment was imposed on the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, in his absence, by the High Court in Colombo early in November, for aiding and abetting the killing of 51 people in a suicide bomb attack on the Central Bank of Sri Lanka in January 1996, and the issuing of an open warrant for his arrest.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.