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Savour
a bit of peace Geneva
follows several previous attempts, starting from Thimpu in the Kingdom
of Bhutan under Indian Government sponsorship, then the Hyderabad
meeting in 1988, Colombo Hilton in 1990 and Bangkok and Hakone thereafter. But to many, including ourselves, there's a sense of déjà vu. We've seen this all before. Clearly, the Norwegians have told the LTTE that Oslo would like the heat taken off them to host talks under circumstances where they need to build trust with the southern Sri Lankan polity big-time. And in the process, the LTTE - for its part in yielding to President Rajapakse's demand - has won the bid to suggest the agenda as the inevitable quid-pro-quo for their seeming flexibility. The agenda for Geneva is going to be the one or two matters very high on the LTTE's priority list - the dismantling of the High Security Zone(HSZ) in Jaffna, and the implementation of the wobbly 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) with special reference to the disarming of the breakaway Karuna faction, that is more than just a spot of bother to the LTTE's military capacity. That seems to be the trade-off for agreeing to Geneva. Now, the question is whether that is a fair exchange; and whether the Government really needed to up the ante on the venue in exchange for having to find answers to how to disarm Karuna and his renegade army that is fighting the LTTE but has been branded as "an illegal armed group" by the Government's Information Department in a bid to placate the LTTE. Arguably,
the new President rode to office on the promise and the premise
that the Norwegians would be ousted as the broker in the peace process,
and having Oslo rejected as the venue for the talks was a consolation
prize. For now, at least, there's a sense of hope that this country could turn in the right direction and join the rest of the world, which we left sometime back, in bringing about a better life for all its peoples. Let us all, savour the moment, at least. A
leaf from Hamas Hamas is more hardline than even the LTTE, however ruthless the latter is known to be. As our deputy editor points out in a special feature on the subject on page 13, Hamas has wowed to destroy the "Zionist state of Israel", something the LTTE has not said about Sri Lanka, though the latter's call for a separate state, may in effect, mean the destruction of the Sri Lankan state in different words. But the point that needs to be made here is a different one. That is, the point that even a group as extreme as Hamas, great exponents of suicide-bombings themselves, have entered the democratic process, and contested elections. They have won the vote of the people they say they represent, and there's no complaints about electoral rigging or coercion, because their opponents, the Fatah, were in office supervising the elctions. At
the end of the day, one cannot claim to be the 'sole representatives
of a people' unless you have won that title through a democratic
election. The LTTE’s political wing is a recognised political party with the Commissioner of Elections, and the upcoming Local Government elections may well be an opportune moment to launch its democratic campaign for the rights of the people it represents. |
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