By P.K. Balachandran, IANS
Colombo : The truce pact with the Tamil Tigers the Sri Lankan government decided to annul Wednesday had in it the seeds of its own destruction, government peace negotiators have said.
The Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) was crafted in early 2002 by the Norwegian facilitators in “undue haste” to beat a February-end deadline, said Bernard Goonetilleke in an earlier speech in Washington.
And for its part, the then United National Front (UNF) government led by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe did not consult President Chandrika Kumaratunga as well as the armed forces commanders prior to finalising it, fearing that they might put spokes in the wheel.
“The CFA was one of the first judgmental errors made by both parties,” Goonetilleke told the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. The pact had raised expectations that could not be implemented, he pointed out.
The armed forces were not given an opportunity to study the text fully and come up with their observations. As a result, some of the deadlines proved difficult to meet, such as those for vacating public buildings occupied by the Sri Lankan armed forces.
The LTTE continued to carry out a variety of violent activities against civilians, and the CFA did not have adequate provisions to check these. As a result, the LTTE continued to abduct children for recruitment and assassinated political opponents, including a high profile personality like Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar.
Emboldened, the Tigers sought a sea passage, like the land passages they had secured. This the Sri Lankan Navy resisted with all its might.
The non-involvement of Sri Lanka’s military brass in the making of the CFA had resulted in the basically militaristic LTTE getting away with provisions which met its military objectives, pointed out former defence secretary Austin Fernando, in his paper in “Negotiating Peace in Sri Lanka”.
Goonetilleke’s colleague in the peace secretariat, John Gooneratne, wrote in his book “Negotiating with the Tigers” that the skewed military provisions in the agreement were a “serious shortcoming”. This considerably undermined the acceptance of the CFA by the public in the Sinhalese-majority south Sri Lanka.
By Sep 30, 2005, taking advantage of the pliant mood of the opponent, the LTTE had indulged in 3,186 ceasefire violations of the CFA, whereas the violations on the part of the Sri Lankan armed forces were just 144.
Having been kept in the dark, President Kumaratunga fought against the CFA tooth and nail and finally took over the defence and interior ministries from the purview of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe towards the end of 2003.
The truce pact was lopsided politically also. While the LTTE was given political rights in the areas controlled by the government, political parties from southern Sri Lanka and non-LTTE Tamil groups were not given reciprocal rights in the areas controlled by the Tigers.
To be fair to the LTTE, successive Sri Lankan governments had neither implemented the CFA in letter and spirit, nor indicated what political solution they had in mind.
A key issue that bothered the LTTE was the covert blessings the breakaway Karuna group got from the government and the armed forces. The LTTE wanted Colombo to disarm the “paramilitary groups” in line with the CFA but the government kept prevaricating.
The Karuna group had been killing LTTE cadres and supporters thwarting Tiger plans to retain or expand their military-cum-political hold in the Tamil-speaking northeast of Sri Lanka. And politico-military consolidation and expansion had been the main intention behind the LTTE decision to go in for the CFA, Bernard Goonetilleke argues.
“From the very beginning, the primary motive of the LTTE was expansion of their domination over areas in the north and east controlled by the government, and in that process, to get rid of the government forces from the Jaffna peninsula and elsewhere, well in advance of a negotiated settlement,” he said.