The Hindu : `India should bring LTTE to negotiating table'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 01, 2002

National

National

`India should bring LTTE to negotiating table'

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI FEB. 28. India could help in the current Sri Lankan peace process by nudging ``the LTTE to the negotiating table and keeping them there,'' the senior adviser to the Sri Lankan President, Lakshman Kadirgamar, said today.

Mr. Kadirgamar added that India was supporting Sri Lankan peace initiatives all along, but he doubted if India would want to commit to active monitoring of the peace process after its ``IPKF experience.'' Sri Lanka had taken India into confidence during the progress of the peace process from the very beginning, he added.

Despite the People's Alliance's (PA) overt differences with the ruling coalition headed by the Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremasinghe, the Sri Lankan President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, and the alliance, fully supported the peace initiatives. This was because it was Ms. Kumaratunga who first began the peace overtures. The present Government was merely following the course charted out by the PA.

``But this does not mean that we do not have our differences. The President is writing about this today and this will have to be discussed in Parliament,'' he said.

Though the LTTE's past record in adhering to ceasefire agreements did not inspire confidence, it was necessary for the Sri Lankan Government to go the extra mile in a bid to find a lasting solution within the framework of the Sri Lankan Constitution. ``I would not know what that man (the LTTE chief, V. Prabakaran) thinks,'' he said but added that signals emanating from the LTTE seemed to indicate that it was ``serious'' this time about finding a lasting solution to the conflict.

A combination of factors _ the September 11 attack in New York, the subsequent shift in the world's perception of struggles of this nature, the aging LTTE leadership (Mr. V. Prabakaran is 48 and the LTTE commanders are also aging), the general battle fatigue that has set in, the problems in maintaining regular flow of funds _ might be at work in making the LTTE leadership approach the ceasefire proposal with the seriousness it deserved, he said.

Asked if Mr. V. Prabakaran would be extradited to stand trial for the assassination of former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, here, he said that though there was a ``request on the table for a long time'' it had not been pressed for and hence had not come up for consideration by the present Sri Lankan Government.

Mr. Kadirgamar was addressing students of the Asian College of Journalism on Media, after which he fielded questions on the ethnic issue.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National