Lanka breakthrough:

US pressure has made LTTE agree to peace talks

WITH the LTTE agreeing to hold direct talks with Colombo, Sri Lanka has been pulled back from the brink of another war.

The agreement, worked out by Norwegian peace broker Erik Solheim, has become possible thanks to the unambiguous message sent out to the LTTE by the US and the restraint shown by newly-elected President Mahinda Rajapakse in the face of sustained provocation.

The agreement has come not a day too soon.

For, since LTTE chief Prabhakaran's November 27 Heroes' Day speech, in which he had made it very clear that an independent Eelam can be achieved only through an armed struggle, there has been a marked increase in violence in the island.

Mr. Rajapakse, who had come to power with the backing of hardline group Janata Vimukti Peramuna and the all-monk Jatika Hela Urumaya on the plank of a unitary solution to the ethnic conflict, had to mount a diplomatic offensive to stave off another war.

He could not persuade India to come to his rescue. The UPA Government confined itself to persuading him to persist with Norway as a peace facilitator. Then he turned to the US.

Lankan Foreign Minister [Mangala] Samaraweera's talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, followed by the visit of US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns to Colombo and the stern warning of US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Jeffrey Lunstead that the LTTE will have to pay a heavy price if it returns to war, have made Prabhakaran relent.

The peace talks, stalled since the LTTE had walked away from the negotiating table in April 2003, are to be held in Geneva next month. The initial round will be confined to strengthening the February 2002 ceasefire agreement, which had come under increasing strain.

In the last three years, the LTTE has suffered a split with the breakaway Karuna fraction, backed by the army intelligence, indulging in a war of attrition in the east.

Both sides have now agreed to end the killings. The US, the European Union, Japan and Norway have made it clear that the LTTE must stop using terror as a political weapon and must support a solution that safeguards Sri Lanka's territorial integrity.

The road to peace may not be smooth. But neither side has any option. Editorial from Deccan Herald India.