Strengthening anti-LTTE safety net vital - The Hindu

Strengthening the 'international safety net' against the LTTE's militarism and terrorism will be intelligent ways of preparing for what lies ahead, The Hindu said yesterday in a commentary.

President Mahinda Rajapakse has done well to reiterate his commitment to the ceasefire and to a new, realistic, and inclusive effort to win "lasting peace through a negotiated political settlement", it said.

The article: "The 2005 Heroes' Day address by the LTTE supremo, Velupillai Prabhakaran, might have nothing dramatic to communicate to Sri Lanka and the world, such as a decision to go to war or a unilateral declaration of Tamil Eelam.

However, it offers fresh insights into a mindset that is uncompromising in its rejection of any `final' solution within the framework of a united and sovereign Sri Lanka and unrelentingly Pol Potist in the means it is wedded to in pursuit of its pipedream of `Tamil Eelam.'

Prabhakaran makes one thing plain: the strategy of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is founded on an unshakeable understanding that the "historically constituted nation of Tamil people living in their traditional homeland in north-eastern Sri Lanka... [cannot] gain a reasonable solution from the Sinhala nation... that the concepts of peace, ceasefire, and negotiations are meaningless... that there would be peace traps... [and that] our people have no alternative other than to fight and win their right to self-determination."

Why then engage in ceasefires and peace talks with the enemy? Prabhakaran's answer is that it is, first, a matter of "liberation organisation" tactics, and, more importantly perhaps, it is a politically "prudent" response to international circumstances imposed on the LTTE.

In other words, the LTTE has been externally constrained, "by unprecedented historical circumstances," in making its choice in matters of war and peace, in being able to do what it knows best to do - go for broke and fight to the death for its pipedream.

Just as it was "compelled to engage in the negotiating process by the intervention of the Indian regional superpower at a particular historical period," explains Prabhakaran, it has been "compelled" over the past four years to engage in a peace process leading to nowhere.

But there have been other reasons as well. Engagement in peace talks with the enemy was "a viable means" to secure legitimacy for the LTTE; to internationalise its struggle; to demonstrate to the world "we are not warmongers addicted to armed violence"; and, "most importantly... to demonstrate beyond doubt that the Sinhala racist ruling elites would not accept the fundamental demands of the Tamils and offer a reasonable political solution."

The LTTE leader also offers a plausible explanation for his decision (incomprehensible outside the terms of the LTTE mindset) to force a boycott of the recent presidential elections by hundreds of thousands of Tamil voters, which had the practical effect of making Mahinda Rajapakse President.

"Finally decid[ing]... to exclude and boycott the Sri Lankan polity and its power system,'' the Tamils stepped out of the way to allow the election of a new government by the Sinhala majority. "In terms of policy," Mr. Prabhakaran adds, stating the perfectly obvious, "the distance between him [Mr. Rajapakse] and us is vast." But since the new President is "considered a realist committed to pragmatic politics," the LTTE will give him a chance to revive the peace process and come forward with "a reasonable political framework that will satisfy the political aspirations of the Tamil people."

However, this must be understood as the LTTE's "urgent and final appeal," and if there is no satisfactory response, the organisation will "next year... intensify our struggle for self-determination... [and] national liberation to establish self-government in our homeland."

President Rajapakse has done well not to over-react to this more than usually revealing statement of extremist policy. He has done well to reiterate his commitment to the ceasefire and to a new, realistic, and inclusive effort to win "lasting peace through a negotiated political settlement."

He has inherited this longest period of non-fighting in two decades from his visionary predecessor as well as from his opponent in the presidential election. He will know this has strong popular backing in Sri Lanka, in equal measure, it seems, among the Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim people, and also international support but that the choice of peace or war is essentially not in his hands.