Talks are first step on long road

The Tamils in the north and east of Sri Lanka want their own state with a strategic port city as their capital. This is something the government is never likely to accept.

RICHARD S. EHRLICH
Bangkok

The US war on terrorism may help Sri Lanka trap suicide Tamil Tiger guerrillas into months of negotiations starting with this week's peace talks, but no one expects the cyanide-eating rebels to soon surrender their dream of independence.

During the past 30 years of escalating civil war, the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE) have never abandoned their struggle for a crescent-shaped nation to be called Tamil Eelam carved into the north and east of Sri Lanka.

The capital would be the strategic port of Trincomalee, used by British and Allied nations during World War Two as the chief naval base for Southeast Asia and the Far East command.

The Tigers' claim to that prized port has worried the United States, England, Israel and other foreign powers who have supported Sri Lanka with money, weapons and training against the rebels.

Trincomalee is potentially the best deep-water port in Asia anywhere between the Philippines and Diego Garcia.

The LTTE has claimed the US secretly wants base rights in Trincomalee, but US officials have denied the allegation.

The stubborn civil war, meanwhile, has killed 64,000 people.

After aerial assaults on Manhattan and the Pentagon on Sept 11, 2001, killed nearly 3,000 people, the US reiterated its list of various unrelated groups which Washington described as terrorist organisations -- including the LTTE.

That move placed the Sri Lankan government in a stronger position.

"This narrow definition has erased the distinctions between genuine struggles for political independence and terrorist violence," Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran said in his annual Heroes' Day speech in November 2001.

"As a consequence, our liberation organisation is also being discredited in the international arena.

"We are not terrorists. We are not mentally demented as to commit blind acts of violence impelled by racist and religious fanaticism."

The US list "sends a wrong message to [Sri Lanka's] Sinhala racist rulers. It will further harden their hardline, intransigent attitude," he said. "It will encourage their policy of military repression."

Atrocities, including the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians, have been committed by both sides during the civil war, according to eyewitnesses, London-based Amnesty International and other groups.

Tamils have awoken to find a bullet-riddled body of a man or woman tied to a lamp post with a big sign warning that this would be the fate of all government informers.

Car bombs and other mass attacks blamed on the Tigers have caused widespread bloodshed.

Sri Lankan troops have bombed and strafed villagers in emotional revenge attacks.

To prop up the government against the guerrillas, Israel has sent intelligence agents, ammunition and equipment.

British mercenaries have helped pilot helicopter gunships and train Sri Lankan troops.

More recently, US military officers and assistance have arrived to boost Sri Lanka.

They have all failed to kill Mr Prabhakaran or destroy the LTTE.

In and around the Tigers' stronghold in the northern town of Jaffna, Tamils express either idolisation or fear of Mr Prabhakaran.

One of their biggest complaints is the Tigers' reliance on Tamil teenagers -- boys and girls -- to fill their endless need for fresh rebels.

The fighting, bomb blasts and assassinations on the island recently lapsed into a cease-fire, allowing the three days of peace talks now taking place at the Sattahip naval base in Chon Buri on the Thai eastern seaboard.

Sri Lanka's US-backed government is not expected to gain its demand at the talks that the Tigers give up their bid for a breakaway nation.

The talks are thought to be the start of lengthy negotiations -- continuing at various venues later this year -- about allowing more goods, services, travel, money and other facilities in and out of Jaffna so its skeletal economy can grow.

The LTTE includes some of the world's most intelligent yet ruthless guerrillas.

Every one of its minority ethnic Tamil rebels wears a leather thong necklace containing a glass vial of cyanide.

If captured, the guerrillas bite down on the vial and die a frothing, painful death to prevent them revealing secrets to the Sri Lankan military.

The Tamil rebels' commitment and the war's roots originated decades ago in response to official racial discrimination by the ruling majority Sinhalese Buddhists who placed restrictions on all Tamils in education and employment.

When the Sri Lankan government belatedly eased its racial policies, so much bloodshed had been spilled on both sides that it was difficult to restore peace.

The Tigers' remedy was to demand a Marxist regime, ruled by a politburo under Mr Prabhakaran, who declared himself their leader until death.

Mr Prabhakaran formed the LTTE in 1972 and since then has eliminated all rival Tamil guerrilla groups fighting for equality or greater autonomy.

Today he is believed to be hiding in jungle lairs in the northeast zone that the Tigers boast is a de facto state.

The LTTE and its supporters, meanwhile, tap Tamil communities in the United States, Canada, England, Australia and elsewhere to finance, arm and publicise their cause.

Stung by increasing isolation, the guerrillas recently indicated they have shrugged off their quasi-Marxism and instead endorse democracy.

The nearest both sides have ever come to agreeing, however, came years ago when they argued over possible provincial autonomy in the north and east.

Under various versions of that plan, the Tamil population would be allowed to elect their own provincial councils which would enjoy expanded powers.

But the idea failed when the Tigers demanded the Northern Province and Eastern Province be united so that Tamils would form a majority throughout the region, which would include Trincomalee on its eastern coast.

The government rejected that demand because it calculated that the Tamils constitute 90 percent of the Northern Province's population, but only an estimated 42 percent of the Eastern Province's residents.

To boost their numbers, the Tigers tried to expel the Eastern Province's other residents, who include Sinhalese and Muslims.

"The Muslims have been asked to leave the Tamil Eelam territory until the independence of Tamil Eelam," the Tigers have said.

"The Muslims supported the aggressive Sri Lankan Sinhala and Muslim military against the freedom of Tamil Eelam."

If the two provinces remain separate, Tamils can dominate only the Northern Province, which is bleak, arid and poor, and the Tigers would never control Trincomalee and its potentially prosperous Eastern Province.

Many Sri Lankan officials and citizens suspect that if the LTTE ever achieves autonomy in a united north and east, it will then go for all out independence.

Those sticking points may be set aside at the peace talks this week in Sattahip, but if the two sides ever discuss autonomy again they are likely to merely reiterate their original positions -- thus ensuring no end in sight to the civil war.

The three days of talks end with a press conference tomorrow (Sept. 18).

Invited delegates include Sri Lankan officials and the LTTE theoretician Anton Balasingham, who wrote the book The Politics of Duplicity.

* Richard S. Ehrlich is a former UPI correspondent who has reported from Asia for the past 24 years.