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Squabbling by Sri Lanka’s two leaders hurting peace process
By Feizal Samath
The World Bank last week expressed serious concern the peace process was being dragged down by bitter squabbles between the country's two leaders, and said the international community should urge all sides to rise above politics and consider this a national issue.

Stressing the importance of the peace process not getting bogged down in party politics, World Bank Country Director for Sri Lanka Peter Harrold noted that, "it is important we start to see some bipartisan approach to peace now." In an interview, he said the biggest fear among donors is that this bipartisanship is not going to happen with "chances of peace falling victim to the short term dictates of politics."

"The greatest fear is that one or the other side will let politics get in the way. Either the opposition may play politics with the issue or the government would fail to invite the opposition in an appropriate way in the peace negotiations … and then this chance will slip away," he said, reflecting growing donors' concerns over the lack of substantial progress in the peace process and fears that it would get ruined by public clashes between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Peace talks have been stalled since April after the LTTE temporarily pulled out over demands that a Tamil Tigers-led interim administration be set up before negotiations resume. Both sides have prepared proposals for such a structure with the government saying discussions on this process may begin later this month, and then go into the critical phase of devolution talks.

Referring to this, Harrold said it was absolutely necessary that at this critical stages of the peace process that the international community spend "more time in encouraging Sri Lanka to approach this exercise as national issue."

He said the President in recent statements had "a clear and unequivocal commitment to devolution as the basis of a solution to the problem," with her decision to scupper the talks with the JVP over devolution making her stand even more clearer.
"It shows that at the heart the govt. and the main opposition party have essentially the same belief, the same approach, the same thinking about a solution."

He said the UK was a good example of bipartisanship where throughout the Northern Ireland troubles, all these issues coming up in parliament were passed by acclamation from all sides. "When it's issues relating to the deaths of your citizens or conflicts within your country, that's not party politics. That is the way it should be happening here."

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