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Seize the opportunity for talks

With the Government expressing its readiness to resume negotiations with the LTTE, the conditions could be considered right for reviving the peace effort. We have this on the authority of President Kumaratunga, who indicated to visiting peace facilitator, Erik Solheim, the flexibility of the Government on issues connected to the peace process.

However, if the LTTE's continuing ceasefire violations are anything to go by, the Tigers don't seem to be enthusiastic about negotiations.

Besides showing scant regard for its ceasefire commitments, the LTTE seems to be hunting for excuses for shunning the negotiatory process. Whereas it should be plain to the LTTE that the President is willing to resume negotiations, the LTTE is tending to seize the negatives in the situation, showing a strong proclivity to clutch at every straw which would help it to drift away from the peace process.

While the impressions of the LTTE in regard to the Government are not to the point, it should take the President at her word and seize this moment to relaunch the negotiatory process. Why isn't the LTTE doing this? Is the LTTE showing its congenital aversion for political negotiations?

The LTTE need hardly be told that the President represents the voice and the will of the State. The President, in other words, is the central governing authority. She has expressed readiness to relaunch talks. What greater incentive do the Tigers need?

While the LTTE blows hot and cold on peace, ceasefire violations by it are continuing. Its latest victim was yet another EPDP top-notcher, this time in Pt. Pedro. It's by its actions that the LTTE would be judged and not by its proclamations. It is clear that the LTTE has not shelved its killer instinct. In fact the ceasefire seems to have stimulated its militancy.

All parties to the conflict need to bear in mind the lessons of history. No durable peace was won by the force of arms. It is only negotiated solutions which helped realise the democratic aspirations and rights of a people, which have helped to bring peace. The LTTE is already collecting a bitter harvest from its past tyrannical actions. Today, after all, the LTTE is a divided house.

While all parties to the conflict need to recognize the supreme importance of compromise and mutual-accommodation, the LTTE should keep its sights on its initial aim-the fulfilment of the legitimate aspirations of the Tamil people.

It is difficult to see how a continued pursuit of terror could help realise this aim. Commitment to the ceasefire and a peaceful disposition are the keys to peace.

Respect for law's guardians

A policeman who went to settle a husband and wife dispute had his uniform torn off and face bitten by the man, according to a newspaper account of the incident which occurred in a remote hamlet of the deep South.

We have come across reports of policemen who have been at the receiving end of some street thug in the course of his duty. However policemen coming under attack during a routine call on a house is a relatively new phenomenon which should be viewed with concern.

Here we have a guardian of the law decked in his official police uniform - with long experience in settling such disputes under his belt - riding his pushcycle to the venue of the trouble to impart his good counsel to reconcile the feuding parties. He leaves his pushcycle in the compound and enters the home. What meets him is a typical scene of rural domestic life.

But here things were going too far. The man was pounding the daylights out of his spouse. All his good intentions and gratuitous advice for domestic reconciliation must have vanished in the policeman. Here before his very eyes blue murder is about to be committed. This was no time for soft talk and patient argument. There was urgent need for action as blood was about to be spilled.

Our well intentioned cop friend plunges into the melee - and gets a black eye for his trouble. As if that was not enough, the demented husband rips off his uniform and sinks his teeth into a choice part of our friend's muscular form, a la Mike Tyson.

"You may be the guardian of the law but she is my wife by law," the husband may have enjoined the cop. So what could the law do but to depart - sadder but wiser. This was the limit, the policeman would have told himself. No more missions to settle domestic rows. He would rather remain in one piece and it would do no good to his uniform.

Speaking of uniforms, another report states that a group of men in police uniforms had waylaid a lorry and robbed Rs.400,000 from a businessman travelling in it at gunpoint near Warakapola.

This brings to the fore the importance attached to the police uniform. Time was when the Khaki uniform was such a symbol of authority that it evoked awe and respect. It is this very uniform which is now been abused in various forms. Perhaps it is time the Police Department took serious note of the matter.

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