The Hindu Business Line : `Lanka peace conditional on various issues'

THOUGH the peace process in Sri Lanka has entered its first year, "a political settlement is a long way off". Before that happens, both the LTTE and the Tamil people will have to be given certain guarantees by the "Sinhala political class," said Prof Jayadeva Uyangoda, Head of the Department of Political Sciences at Colombo University, to Business Line.

Excerpts from the interview:

So how is the peace process going, after a year of talks?

This is the consolidation of the process, and the negotiation process might go on for quite some time.

But there are two negative dimensions — one the absence of political unity in the south and political instability, and, two, the absence of other players.

Such as...

The PA and the JVP in the south, and other political parties in the north. As well as India, which is a key stakeholder.

But it is now watching from the sidelines...

It is a key stakeholder. I told you last year too that India can make or break peace in Sri Lanka.

But periodically your Prime Minister visits India and keeps the Indian leadership informed on what is going on...

Yes, the Norwegians as well as the LTTE know that. That is why the LTTE has been making a lot of overtures, which are being rejected by India for understandable reasons.

But, ultimately, for peace to be a lasting commodity here, the Indian Government and the LTTE will have to come to some kind of terms. After all Prabhakaran is a proclaimed offender in India for the Rajiv Gandhi assassination...

The Indian thinking, I suppose, is to wait patiently for a post-Prabhakaran LTTE.

But that might take a long time...

Yes, I feel that India should change its thinking, but cannot because of the LTTE's role in the killing of Rajiv Gandhi. That is why India finds it extremely difficult to accommodate the LTTE as long as it is headed by Prabhakaran and as long as Pottu Amman is there. India is waiting very quietly.

Also, the Indian High Commission here is helping the Sri Lankan people. There are other ways of helping the progress, you do not have to make a big noise about the negotiations.

So, the peace process is still a prisoner to so many ifs and buts...

That is why peace processes in the modern world are uncertain and unpredictable, particularly intra-state conflicts unlike inter-state conflicts.

In the latter you can bring the parties to the negotiating table, you can force them to sign an agreement and from that day you can say there is peace.

But here the settlement is conditional up on a variety of political, military, international and diplomatic global and regional issues.

Meanwhile, normalcy seems to have returned at least to southern Sri Lanka...

To a great deal, except for the economy, where there will be no normalcy unless the planned aid consortium meeting in Japan succeeds, of which there are good chances, but the money has to come.

But the Iraq war is going to change so many things...

The post-Iraq global economic crisis is going to hit us too. Also, worrying is the political atmosphere within which any peace process can make sense.

Otherwise the negotiation process is unlikely to break down unless something really unfortunate happens.

To me, it seems that when the Iraq war is on and India and Pakistan are once again coming to the brink, at least this tiny country is making a sincere and serious attempt at peace...

But that is not universally appreciated in India.

That is not true...

You are right. Amidst so much of international tension, here is a tiny island of peace. In the last year, a gradual de-escalation of war has happened.

Now there is an actual possibility of delinking the ethnic conflict from war and violence.

That I think is the first most important achievement in the peace process. Even assuming that there is not going to be a settlement agreement in the foreseeable future, the delinking of the ethnic conflict from war and violence is significant.

Also, though the talks are still confined to the dominant actors, at other levels, a whole lot of things like reconciliation efforts through civic society initiatives are happening. The LTTE in the north is involved in resolving land disputes and there are law and order issues. A lot of things are happening.

The other issue is the Tamil-Muslim rivalry. A lot of people had thought the Tamil-Muslim tension would result in undermining the negotiations.

But it did not happen. Initially there were riots in the eastern provinces and the Muslim politicians tended to use that as an issue to undermine the negotiations by provoking Muslims. All this happened in early and mid 2002. But gradually the tension was brought under control.

Incidents happen, but when you have a fairly significant process of negotiation, the other problems that come up in the way can be managed. And so the Muslim factor, the whole LTTE-army high security zone issue, the Mullaitivu naval incident...all these have not affected the negotiation process.

Also, the LTTE does not want to go back to war immediately, even though it will not allow itself to weaken militarily, because it has come to the negotiating table from a position of military strength.

Can you put a time frame to a settlement?

Theoretically, the new understanding of conflicts is that they are unending wars. You cannot really say this is the end of this war.

What you have is a whole process of transformation. At least you are having a fairly long period of peace.

My reckoning is that a protracted ceasefire, which I would call negative peace, would create conditions that will consolidate the peace process .

The reconstruction and rehabilitation process and the positive consequences of that will ultimately result in reinforcing the peace process.

What kind of a role is the President playing?

She has been trying to play a political game. First she felt she had been excluded from the process and then the Prime Minister invited her. Then there were a lot of problems within her own party; there was a challenge to her leadership, she thought the only way to mobilise support from the party was to attack the government on the peace front.

She thought the peace negotiations were the weakest link of the government but they turned out to be its strongest link. In a recent meet with diplomats she assured the world that she is for peace, has always been for peace.

To her too it is a question of political survival...

Yes, but she has entered into an alliance with the JVP which is not in favour of a negotiated settlement with the LTTE.

So she is caught up in that challenge and cannot support the UNP either, because of both personal and inter-party rivalry.

Ultimately, and even assuming her party is in power, she has no other option but continue the negotiations.

What about the LTTE's commitment that it will stop recruiting children as soldiers?

This is a much more complex phenomenon than what a lot of people here and abroad have portrayed.

At one level, there is military training and who are the youngsters the LTTE is training? The orphans. In the LTTE's thinking, at least they educate and give military training and `look after' them. And it is not like a middle-class Colombo child being abducted and forcibly given military training.

That is the LTTE's thinking. Also, the LTTE has as yet no guarantees from the Sri Lankan Government of a political settlement; they are just talking.

So do you think a political settlement is still some time away?

Yes. Because the LTTE should have the assurance that the Sinhala political leadership is ready to do business with the LTTE.

If you look at it from the LTTE's point of view, there is no reason why it should even trust the Sinhala political leadership.

But while a political settlement is a long time away, processes of reconciliation and de-escalation have begun and will create the ground conditions for a political settlement.

But before that, the Sinhala political class will have to make up their minds whether they want to treat the Tamils as equals. My own feeling is that the Sinhala political class — not the people — is not yet 100 per cent ready to treat the Tamils as equals. At least they have not yet given that message to the Tamils.

That is why it will take time for the LTTE to totally give up its secessionist project and armed struggle, and a large part of this responsibility lies with the Sinhala political class.

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