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The dropping of the Eelam demand

The LTTE's decision to renounce the demand for Eelam, besides being one of the most significant and positive outcomes at the first round of Government-LTTE negotiations, changes drastically the terms or the "parameters" within which the peace effort would be conducted from now on. As long as the LTTE was seen as fighting for Eelam or a separate, Tamil nation state, negotiations with the Tigers were considered futile and impossible by particularly nationalistic elements of Southern Sri Lanka.

The Eelam platform was a significant barrier, therefore, to resolving the ethnic conflict by political means. The dropping of the Eelam demand raises as never before, the possibility of the national question being resolved by political means on equitable terms.

The concept of Eelam, quite understandably, conjured in many Southern minds, a separate self-contained state in the North-East, under LTTE control, within Lanka's geographical boundaries. In terms of this Southern fear, its materialization would have divided Lanka in two and led to the formation of two constantly feuding states. Accordingly, Eelam was a highly emotive issue in Southern Sri Lanka, which led to a popular repudiation of the LTTE and all that it stood for. Hence the demand by some previous governments that the Tigers renounce the Eelam cry before launching negotiations.

Little was it realised in Southern Sri Lanka that Eelam was at best an optimalist position which would have been modified or wittled down in degree to the sensitivity governments showed to fundamental Tamil grievances. The UNF Government was sufficiently perspicacious to negotiate with the LTTE without preconditions and this open-minded approach to negotiations has brought positive results - chief among them being the LTTE's decision to give up the Eelam demand. It goes without saying that this would lead to an allaying of fears in the South on the LTTE's agenda and result in a more accommodationist and receptive attitude in this part of the country towards Tamil grievances.

To be sure, a more comprehensive assessment of these developments should await the release of the relevant official reports of the talks, but no less a person than the LTTE's chief negotiator, Dr. Anton Balasingham, has outlined in brief what Tamil expectations could be by way of an alternative to a separate state. It is an order of things where Tamil self-determination would be a reality. Political self-determination for a community doesn't imply the inauguration of a separate state.

On the contrary, it could be an autonomous region within inviolate state boundaries, where the community would be exercising limited self-governing rights. The exact configurations of this state are a matter for future negotiation, but we have undoubtedly arrived at a crucial turning - point in the local debate on resolving the national question, with the broaching of these issues.

As far as we can gather, Southern opinion is not averse to devolving a greater degree of power to the North-East, within a unitary state and this could be a starting point for negotiations, but these are matters for the future.

Meanwhile, the peace process needs to be kept ticking. As Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has time and again pointed out, popular peace hopes are soaring well beyond the State's and other significant players' ability to meet them. The people are impatient for dynamic, positive change. This is where the critics of the peace process would find that they are being resoundingly defeated.

The people want to get on with their lives and wouldn't bother too much about the bogeys nationalistic elements are conjuring. However, development has to take firm root in the country if the current sense of renewal is to have a palpable basis. Particularly in the North-East, the people need to realise that their life chances are improving. Negotiations need to go in tandem with dynamic development.

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