‘LTTE will have no option but to negotiate’

Dr. Amunugama’s opening remarks:

We are now reaching a critical phase in the relationship between the Government and the LTTE. Now, there has been the provincial council election in the East and Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan who was the assistant of Karuna has been made the Chief Minister.

He started as a child soldier, graduated through the LTTE. But when there was this conflict with the Security Forces, Karuna’s group joined hands with us. The LTTE’s strength in the Eastern province has been largely reduced. Initially we had the local bodies election - elections of Batticaloa and one of the smaller villages.

Both were won by Chandrakanthan. Subsequently, there was the Eastern Provincial Council election. The Government and Chandrakanthan [referring to the electoral pact between the Sri Lankan Freedom Party and Thamil Makkal Viduthalai Puligal] won that election. Now he is the Chief Minister.

He is getting on famously with other Chief Ministers. Recently he has been appointed chairman of the Chief Ministers’ Council. That has led to a lot of consequences.

Firstly, it has brought to the fore the ethnic tensions in the Eastern province. Because, of all the provinces in Sri Lanka, it is the East that is typical of this ethnic conflict. Because you have, roughly, one-third Tamils, one-third Muslims and one-third Sinhalese in the ethnic composition of the Eastern province. Some form of relationships among these will augur well for the future.

For the first time, we are now grappling with this rather difficult problem of the inter se relationship between Muslims, Sinhalese and Tamils.

Muslims are a little bit cheesed off because they were hoping to have their first Chief Minister there, but I think the government took the correct decision because the Eastern elections, which [were] also a message to the Northern province, that [if] they enter the democratic stream, it is quite possible that the organisation of the LTTE or some other Tamil organisation can have their own Chief Minister in the North, decisively a Tamil-dominated area. So, our Governmental model is that like in the southern provinces, there will be two provincial councils, one in the East and one in the North.

Q: What is the status of the merger of the Northern and the Eastern provinces?

A: In the case of the Indo-Lanka accord [of July 1987], there was no permanent merger. It was a temporary merger to be followed by a plebiscite - a referendum among the people of the Eastern province so that they could decide whether they could merge it or not.

Given the ethnic composition, it was very clear that they would not vote for a merger.

And, at the press conference following the signing, with Rajiv Gandhi by his side, President J.R. Jayewardene said I am also going to campaign against the merger. Then you can have a temporary merger.

That was more or less the attitude of the Government. So now that has become a de facto two-provincial-council theory because the Supreme Court held that it was not constitutionally acceptable to supersede the boundaries.... it [the merger] had never had the acceptance of the Sinhalese community, the Muslim community and indeed the Tamil residents of the Eastern province. So that situation is getting clarified, though it is a body blow to the objectives of the LTTE. So the Government’s position is very clear.

If and when the Northern province is taken over by the Security Forces, we will follow the same Eastern province formula. There will be an election. Whoever is elected will be the Chief Minister of the Northern province. So we will go back to the old British model of nine provinces. The Indo-Lanka agreement visualised the change of that into eight provinces... with a temporary merger of the North and the East. So the Government is following that plan.

Q: How is the conflict going in the North ?

A: Every time the LTTE was besieged, the relieving forces came from the East. Basically, the Northern troops are small in number. Once Karuna left the scene, it was very difficult for the LTTE to think of a large fighting force. And during the encounter they lost a lot of weapons and so on. From that time there has been a steady erosion of, I would say, the LTTE’s fighting capability, On the other hand, the Government Security Forces also have increased their numbers.

I was reading about the attack on Hitler’s bunkers in Berlin. The Russians came from different fronts. In the Berlin example, the fighting was really on the outer periphery. Once you penetrate that periphery, you drive straight on to Berlin.

Here, now the fighting is going on in those four focal points. And that I think is a decisive [factor]. If any of the focal points is lost, it will be a clear run to Mullaitivu. It is very much like in the Berlin scenario where the final, decisive fighting took place almost on the frontier. If those points are lost, for example Muhamalai, a key point - if Muhamalai is lost, there will be a direct drive into Mullaitivu.

Q: What is the size of territory controlled by the LTTE ? Do you think Prabhakaran’s LTTE will come to terms with the present situation?

A: Earlier the LTTE controlled all the [eight] districts in these two provinces [the North and the East]. Now they hold two districts - Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu [in the North]. They have lost the capability. I attribute it mostly to the loss of the East. Karuna and the East... I would say they will have no option but to negotiate very soon in the future.

Because they don’t have the territory now. They don’t have the same amount of weapons now. I think the global community has cut off a lot of the financial backing.

After 9/11, once they were also put on the terrorist list, they had the global community going after them. They were picked up in America, Singapore, Thailand and India. Everywhere anti-terrorist activity took precedence over the basic political dimension.

Q: As somebody who supported the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement and probably every initiative to resolve the ethnic question through the political devolution of power in a peaceful way, how do you understand the President’s vision of what lies ahead for your country ?

A: Basically, in this ethnic issue there were two sub issues - the unit of devolution and the powers to be devolved. Everything was subsumed under those questions. The unit of devolution question is solved. In other words, we go back to nine provinces which we inherited from the British regime.

On the powers to be devolved, we can go back to the Indo-Lanka agreement and the 13th Constitution Amendment. Because that’s a mirror image of the powers that are devolved in an Indian State... If we can have devolution of powers to the provincial councils in the manner that is done under the Indian Constitution, that will not only be fair but India also will not have a grouse because that is exactly what has been conferred on its own States.

That was Jayewardene’s idea also to bring the two on a par. That removes a lot of unnecessary debate and argument. That’s a very acceptable solution.

It is very difficult for a Sri Lankan citizen to argue that he should get more powers than what an Indian citizen should have in terms of his regional identity. India has so many ethnic groups. You are managing them well. With a smaller number of ethnic groups, why can’t we go on like that? That’s the thinking.

Q: Is the President committed to this vision?

A: President Mahinda Rajapaksa is fully committed. Lot of pressures. Still, he is fully committed.