By M.R. Narayan Swamy
New Delhi, (IANS) Norway’s special envoy to Sri Lanka, Jon Hanssen Bauer, is to visit India soon to explore how to take ahead the fractured peace process in the war-hit country. But there are no immediate prospects of fresh peace talks.
Bauer will be meeting officials of the external affairs ministry and National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan to have a personal assessment of what India is thinking vis-à-vis the Sri Lankan conflict.
It will be the first trip to New Delhi this year by Bauer, who was named special envoy in March 2006 but who quickly went off the peace facilitation radar in the wake of escalating violence in Sri Lanka.
Indian officials will provide the 55-year-old diplomat a detailed view of what they feel has gone wrong in Sri Lanka, where fighting involving the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has killed the Norway-brokered 2002 ceasefire agreement (CFA) for all practical purposes and intent.
Informed sources, however, told IANS that there were no prospects of Colombo authorities and the LTTE meeting any time soon to resume the stalled peace negotiations.
“The visit is meant to keep up contacts and spirits. And hope,” one source said.
Bauer will not visit Sri Lanka this time. But he may, hopefully, in the not too distant future, the sources said.
Bauer’s visit comes just months after Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse met Norwegian International Development Minister Erik Solheim, the former special envoy who still oversees the peace process, in Geneva.
It will also take place shortly after Rajapakse’s trip to New Delhi where he met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and said that his government would be willing to talk if the Tigers showed interest in “genuine negotiations”.
LTTE chief Velupillai Prabahakaran, who is faced with one of the most serious military challenges since he started his armed campaign for Tamil Eelam, will be making his annual policy statement in November-end.
India is seriously concerned over the situation in Sri Lanka, where the military’s success in driving away the LTTE from the eastern province has made it gung-ho about taking on the Tigers entrenched in the north. If that happens, it could be a messy affair.
At the same time, the earlier hopeful signs of Colombo unveiling a credible power sharing arrangement have given way to despair following political developments that have disappointed those who still nurture a belief in a negotiated settlement.
With Western countries overseeing the peace process realising the vast complexities of the Sri Lanka scenario, it is not going to be easy for Norway to forge ahead. This is where India, which has a special interest in Sri Lanka, comes in.
Once violence escalated in Sri Lanka from December 2005, Norway got Colombo and the LTTE to meet in Geneva and Oslo. But the talks did not make much progress. After the LTTE tried to assassinate the Sri Lankan army chief in April 2006 and Rajapakse’s brother and Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapakse in December, the situation got out of hand.
Colombo then barred Bauer from going to Kilinochchi, the LTTE political hub. The Tigers also complained that Norway was not putting enough pressure on Sri Lanka to halt its military offensive.
Although Sri Lanka now holds the upper hand militarily, it is under intense pressure internationally to check its deteriorating human rights record. It is at such a juncture that Norway is trying to find out what it can do to put the peace process back on the rails.