Thoughts from London

Surrender your leaders before we talk
The Colombo media were so focused in recent weeks on the games going on in the playing field of politics and the possibility of a general election soon that they failed to latch on to what was surely an important news story on India-LTTE relations.
A section of the media published excerpts of the speech made by the LTTE's one-time chief negotiator Anton Balasingham at the Heroes' Day rally in London earlier this month.

Among the more important of his remarks was a feeler to India that the two sides should now restore their shattered relations. Balasingham was making an appeal to India to forget some unsavoury chapters in their chequered history that include the armed conflict between the Indian peace-keepers and later the assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Having reported these remarks one would have expected the media to follow it up and seek the reaction of New Delhi to these all too obvious overtures to restart relations with a clean slate.

Surely this does not call for enterprising journalism. It would be the obvious thing to do.
But since the media were apparently too pre-occupied with the political jostling between the president and the prime minister and related issues, they paid little or no attention to India's response to the Balasingham balloon.

That was a serious mistake. Those who are so vociferous over what they perceive to be foreign meddling in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka and are ready to castigate one and all at the drop of a diphthong should have been the first to condemn this LTTE attempt to win some sort of external acceptance by appealing for a resumption of friendly relations with our neighbour.

After all even India cannot deny, as it did some years ago, that it did finance, arm and train the LTTE and other Tamil militant groups in the 1980s. So any attempt by the LTTE to try and resume bilateral relations with India, even though not at the high level of the 1980s, should cause concern among the critics and so the story should have been pursued vigorously.

Since this was not done the media missed the opportunity of reporting the Indian riposte to the LTTE's offer of better relations. Shortly after Balasingham made his appeal in his London speech that came a few days after the LTTE leader's address from the Wanni, in order to attract weekend crowds, India had its message conveyed to Balasingham and the LTTE.

It was simple and it was straightforward in case the LTTE and its pundits tried to play semantics and misconstrue or twist the message for its benefit. India, it was said, is ready to talk to the LTTE. But before that its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and intelligence chief Pottu Amman should surrender themselves to the Indian High Commission in Colombo.

It was pointed out to the LTTE, in case it had forgotten, that both Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman had been convicted by the Indian courts for their part in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and so are still sought by the Indian authorities. Balasingham was told in no uncertain terms that the verdict delivered by the courts in India where the independence of the judiciary is strictly upheld, cannot be altered even by the Indian government.

If the LTTE duo wished to appeal against their conviction they could do so, but only after they had surrendered and placed themselves under Indian jurisdiction. That message, loud and clear, was to convey India's attitude to a suggestion it has found to be objectionable, to say the least.

But that is not all. New Delhi appears to have a few more tricks up its collective sleeve to show its abhorrence for the Tiger's attempts to cultivate relations while not unequivocally admitting that it plotted and planned the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.
India's military has also not forgiven the LTTE for its military losses in the north and northeast during its peace-keeping years when some 1000 odd soldiers were killed and double that number wounded.

So the Indian armed forces would like to help curb the activities of the Tigers, particularly crackdown on arms smuggling, if it cannot have a shot at the LTTE directly. The Tigers' recent package of proposals, especially their wish to control the seas adjacent to the territory claimed by them amounting to two-thirds of the coastline, has raised the ire of the Indians.

With India having economic interests in Trincomalee where it has leased out several of the old British Admiralty oil tanks, New Delhi does not want to be dictated to by the Tigers on who can and who cannot use the seas. This is why India has said that there can only be two navies in the area -- Indian and Sri Lankan.

This is one reason why India is keen to go ahead with the Defence Co-operation Agreement that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe initiated. Such an agreement which is likely to include joint naval patrols and sharing of intelligence could also eliminate the need for SLMM officials on board Sri Lanka navy boats. New Delhi would like to see an initial discussion paper prepared by Sri Lanka's Defence Ministry to launch formal talks for which the Indian defence and home ministers are prepared to fly to Colombo.

The sooner the initial discussion paper is ready, setting out Sri Lanka's needs and the scope of the agreement, the sooner India believes it will be able to make its presence felt, perhaps with regular visits by its navy to Trincomalee to show the flag.

But that covers largely the north-eastern and eastern seas. What of the northwest?
If the current Indian interests in oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mannar is reciprocated by Sri Lanka and a joint venture with the Indian Oil and Natural Gas Commission is inked, then India would need to provide security for its economic interests in that area.

In this way India would provide a security arc from south of Mannar to the north-eastern waters, precisely the seas used by the LTTE to smuggle arms into the country. The Indian objective is to show the LTTE and its leader that it cannot dictate the use of the seas where New Delhi's security interests are involved.

It is an outright rejection of the LTTE's proposals that go beyond the accepted contours of a federal structure, a point that the European Union's Commissioner for External Affairs Chris Patten made to Prabhakaran and other LTTE leaders during talks in the Wanni, on which Patten's critics have remained strangely silent.
Perhaps they were not aware that Indian diplomats had already met with Patten and briefed him on New Delhi's assessment of the LTTE proposals before he arrived in Colombo.

That is why India is quite content with Patten's message to the LTTE that was in many ways consistent with India's own position on the LTTE proposals. While Patten reminded the LTTE of the Oslo Declaration which the Tigers accepted at the time, India has expanded on that in the Vajpayee-Wickremesinghe joint statement of October and clearly stated what it expects from the Tigers. The question now is whether the LTTE will wilt under this international and regional pressure or say to hell with all that.

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