Let's Talk Peace, Wounded Minister Tells Rebels
An assassination attempt that wounded Sri Lanka's president and its justice minister has not shaken their determination to find a solution to the island's civil war. A Gemini News Service correspondent speaks to the minister and points to the formidable hurdles that stand in their way.
WITH his shattered right arm heavily sheathed in plaster, Sri Lanka's Ethnic Affairs and Justice Minister shows no bitterness as he speaks calmly of his brush with death.
Lakshman Peiris was badly wounded when a suicide bomber set off an explosion in an assassination attempt on President Chandrika Kumaratunga on December 18.
But Peiris is not thirsting for revenge against Sri Lanka's separatist Tamil rebels, declaring instead he is keen for the peace process to be resurrected.
He believes talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam should be held without preconditions. Colombo should not insist on its earlier demands that the rebels must first surrender their arms, he says.
Peiris was speaking during a trip to London for medical treatment in January. The former law professor was largely responsible for drawing up devolution proposals which would give the minority Tamils a substantial measure of self-rule. The package has been dismissed by the Tigers, who have been fighting for an independent state in the north and east of the island for 17 years.
"One mustn't allow oneself to be hamstrung or impeded by preconditions that lead to a great deal of argument and disagreement," Peiris says. "Obviously the problem needs to be sorted out. So if there is an evident necessity to get on with the negotiations then nothing must be done to increase the difficulties in respect to the commencement of the negotiations."
Both he and Kumaratunga, who may lose the sight of her right eye because of the bombing, say they are determined to press on for peace.
The attack, at a campaign rally three days before December's presidential election, killed 26 people and is likely to cost Peiris at least some use of his arm. He may have to live with a metal pellet embedded in a lung.
"I realised later how close I had been to death," he recalls. "The injury in the lung was particularly serious. If the pellet had veered half an inch it would have penetrated the heart." The shrapnel that shattered his upper arm just missed a vital nerve. Damage to this could have caused paralysis.
For the president, the attack would have brought back horrific memories.
She was in her early teens when her father, Solomon Bandaranaike, then prime minister, was assassinated by a Buddhist monk in 1959. Almost 30 years later, her husband, Vijaya, a film star and politician, was shot dead at his home - apparently by extremists from the majority Sinhala community as a punishment for trying to negotiate with Tamil militants.
Kumaratunga, 54, who visited London two weeks before Peiris to seek specialist treatment, told journalists she believed that she had survived the assassination attempt because she was meant to be a "messenger of peace".
Peiris said: "Even after all that has happened, the president is quite unwavering and resolute in her determination to pursue negotiations in order to achieve a viable and durable solution."
Not everyone, however, agrees with the validity of her peace credentials.
In November, the Tamil Tiger leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, described Kumaratunga's rule as "the most blood-stained chapter in the history of oppression of the Tamils".
He and other critics of the president say she has poured more money into intensifying the war, and that her forces have occupied the 'Tamil homeland' in the Jaffna peninsula and carried out atrocities against civilians.
Peiris concedes that, given the current relations between the government and the Tigers, direct bilateral negotiations are unlikely to achieve an early breakthrough.
During the civil war, which has cost up to 70,000 lives, governments in Colombo have engaged the rebels in negotiations three times. The third occasion was in October 1994, when Kumaratunga was prime minister and just before she was elected president. Six months later, the Tigers ended the ceasefire by attacking naval vessels in the eastern port of Trincomalee.
The Tigers, who started out as a small hit-and-run guerrilla outfit, have grown to be the most feared rebel force in the world, commanding a virtual army - with its own naval unit - that has inflicted humiliating defeats on government forces over the last seven years.
Using a combination of terror tactics and conventional warfare, the Tigers have set out their own preconditions: for the army to pull back and for food and other goods to be supplied to Tamil areas. In the current circumstances, Peiris believes that the assistance of a third party is vital to achieve progress.
"The form of involvement of a third party is a matter for discussion," he said. "But certainly a third party has to be involved to get the negotiations going."
However, efforts in this direction have so far proved fruitless. Over the past two years, the Commonwealth Secretary-General and the Norwegian government have tired unsuccessfully to facilitate talks.
The pragmatic approach favoured by government members such as Peiris would envisage the setting aside of preconditions by both sides - the question now is whether those advocating peace can carry the hard-liners both inside government and across the political spectrum.
Clearly, Kumaratunga faces formidable hurdles despite winning a second six-year term in the December poll.
She has not been helped by continuing violence in Colombo in January - another suicide bomber killed 13 people near the prime minister's office and a Tamil separatist politician was shot dead - or by vague allegations in the state-run media of a plot to overthrow her. The reports seek to implicate everyone from the Tigers to the opposition United National Party and may end up alienating potential partners in the peace process.
Kumaratunga currently remains secluded in her barricaded residence, but she cannot remain there for ever. She wants to enact devolution legislation, despite opposition from the separatists, and has to call parliamentary elections by August. She will be seeking to boost the slim majority of her ruling People's Alliance to help her push through devolution. But she will be hard-pressed to campaign from behind closed doors.
While she appears genuinely interested in finding a solution to the problem, for the moment, time does not appear to be on her side.
The author is a senior Sri Lankan journalist who writes from London for The Sunday Times, Colombo, and the Hong Kong Standard.
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