Government Statement on Peace Negotiations  
[30 Apr 2001]

Statement issued by the Ministry of Information and Media on the LTTE's withdrawal of its cease-fire

It was no surprise to the Government of Sri Lanka that the LTTE announced on April 23, 2001, that it was not extending the four month long “unilateral cease-fire” declared by it on December 24, 2000, without even consulting the Norwegian Government which, at that time, was already working, at the request of the parties, towards bringing them together for the commencement of negotiations. It has been the Government’s view that this was not a genuine unilateral cease-fire but rather a unilateral effort at international deception. The Government, from the outset, had declared unequivocally that it was not accepting the LTTE’s “unilateral cease-fire,” described by the LTTE as a “goodwill measure to facilitate the peace process,” because, as the Government had stated in its press release of December 23, 2000, “further gestures of goodwill are unnecessary when the Government has clearly indicated its wish to engage in talks with the LTTE forthwith on the substantial issues involved, with a view to resolving the ethnic question, ending the war and constructing a durable peace.” The press release went on to state that “the Government considers a cease-fire a consequent step that would arise when negotiations proceed to the mutual satisfaction of both sides.” The Government repeated its call to the LTTE, “to engage honestly in this opportunity for Peace.” It warned that “until then, military operations will continue.” 

The Government went ahead with its agenda for peace with the assistance of the designated representatives of the Norwegian Government who are acting as facilitators. The LTTE participated in these efforts and considerable progress had been made in reaching agreement on a document that would embody humanitarian measures to alleviate any hardships and dangers to civilians affected by the ongoing armed conflict, and contribute to building understanding and a foundation on which negotiations can take place. 

During the past five months the LTTE had held out a strong promise of coming to the negotiating table, sooner rather than later. But in the last round of extensive talks with the Norwegian Ambassador, Mr. Jon Westborg, who went to the Vanni on April 6 to meet some of the LTTE leaders they raised certain “concerns” associated with the commencement of negotiations. Consequently, Ambassador Westborg had to return to Colombo without having finalized the content of the said document, although the Government had given its approval to all substantial matters in that document prior to Ambassador Westborg’s journey into the Vanni. In fact, the Government had told him that it would by April 11 give its formal consent to the document in a communication from the Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka to the Foreign Minister of Norway, according to the agreed procedure, in order to commence implementation of the agreed humanitarian measures. 

The latest action of the LTTE fully justifies the Government’s decision not to reciprocate its unilateral cease-fire. The LTTE has once again proved that it cannot be trusted on the issue of a genuine cease-fire. It has unilaterally abandoned earlier cease-fires and cessation of hostility, the last being in April 1995. 

The LTTE claims that it had become impossible to “contain the military assaults of the enemy with our self-restrained defensive tactics without resorting to counter offensive operations”. Far from exercising self-restraint, the LTTE has in fact violated its own unilateral cease-fire on more than 224 occasions during the past four months, the details of which are well documented and available. This conduct on the part of the LTTE also fully vindicates the Government’s rejection of its unilateral cease-fire as a “political stunt” from the very outset. The Government has been misled more that once before by the LTTE’s tactics regarding cease-fires which have been used for resting, regrouping, and re-arming their cadres before another assault. The Government will not allow itself to be misled once again. 

In view of the large number of violations of its own cease-fire it is indeed farcical for the LTTE to state that though it has been “strictly and rigorously observing a cessation of hostilities, the Sri Lanka armed forces have been relentlessly engaged in hostile military operations to frustrate and demoralise our fighters. The LTTE should be reminded that it even violated the truce declared by Government forces for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year and Easter holidays, with a battle at sea. As for the frustration and demoralisation of its own fighters, the reasons should be found in the LTTE’s failure to capture Jaffna as it intended, the persistent refusal of the people of Jaffna to live in LTTE controlled areas and their movement into Government held areas, and the understanding of the people that the war they are being forced to participate in is an exercise in futility carried out only for the benefit of the LTTE’s leaders. 

The LTTE laments that its repeated pleas to the international community, particularly the United States, Britain, European nations and India to use their diplomatic good offices to persuade the Government of Sri Lanka to reciprocate its cease-fire were of no avail. The LTTE must understand that of the countries mentioned - India, the United Kingdom and the United States of America - two of them have proscribed the LTTE and one has declared it to be a terrorist organisation. The European countries too have of late come to revise their assessment of the LTTE. As for India, our closest neighbour and the country most concerned with the LTTE’s activities, the LTTE should know that the Government of Sri Lanka has kept the Government of India fully informed of the progress that was taking place with the Norwegian facilitation, and that the Government of India was in turn fully appreciative of Sri Lanka’s position. These countries are also well aware of the previous track record of the LTTE with regard to cease-fires. 

It is the complaint of the LTTE that instead of giving ear to their endless propaganda about gestures towards peace, “some Governments have imposed proscription and other restrictions on the LTTE, whereas the other party in conflict is being provided with financial assistance , military aid and training facilities thereby encouraging our (the LTTE’s) enemy to adopt a hard-line, militaristic approach”. The LTTE must surely understand that sovereign States in their dealings with each other do not accede to the requests of terrorist organisations. Firstly, it is the right of Sri Lanka as a sovereign State to obtain whatever assistance it can, from wherever it can, whether it be regarding the proscription of an organisation that is a threat to peace and security, the purchase of arms, or securing training facilities, to defend itself against a terrorist organisation that threatens its sovereignty and territorial integrity. A sovereign State is fully entitled in international law to protect itself from an enemy waging war against it. 

Similarly, the import of weapons systems, whether lethal or not, and the boosting of its Navy and Airforce, as well as the modernisation of its armed forces is the unquestioned right and prerogative of a sovereign State, about which the LTTE has no right whatsoever to complain. 

It is necessary to remind the LTTE that it was not during its fake cease-fire of the last four months that it “suffered serious setbacks, militarily losing strategically important territory in the Jaffna Peninsula and suffering substantial casualties”. In fact, the LTTE suffered serious setbacks and lost what it considers strategically important territory in the Jaffna Peninsula in the two months before December 24, with the success of the various stages of "Operation Kinihira”. It was when it could no longer face the continued advance of Government troops that it declared its unilateral cease-fire, with the purpose of abandoning it when the occasion so required. 

In abandoning its own cease-fire the LTTE also makes a threat of violent attacks in Colombo and the southern provinces. This is directly implied in its statement that on their part they have “co-operated in every possible manner with the Norwegian Government in their facilitatory peace effort and that by observing peace we did implement the obligations of the Norwegian ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ by suspending all armed operations and violent attacks in Colombo and in the southern provinces”. What this clearly means is that the LTTE, while at last publicly admitting responsibility for all the earlier carnage and destruction it caused through violent attacks in Colombo and the southern provinces, is once again ready to carry out its acts of cowardly violence against civilians and civilian targets. Such warnings of the deliberate targeting of civilians show the total lack of humane thinking among the LTTE’s leadership. What they speak of is naked terrorism, pure and simple. 

The LTTE keeps on repeating the lie that the Government has refused to allow the free flow of essential items into the Vanni, and has therefore deliberately delayed the implementation of the Norwegian proposal for certain humanitarian measures to be taken to ease the life of people of the Vanni. In the first place, these humanitarian measures are embodied in a document that has been the subject of much discussion between the Norwegian Government, the LTTE and the Government of Sri Lanka but has not yet been finalised and formalised. By the beginning of April, the Government of Sri Lanka had agreed in substance to all the proposals in the document. But the LTTE has been dragging its feet, raising “pre-conditions”, “pre-requisites” and “concerns” relating to the commencement of negotiations which are predicated in the document to begin within a stated period after the commencement of implementation of the humanitarian measures. Thus, it is the LTTE that has prevented that document from coming into force and is thus clearly responsible for delaying the implementation of measures designed to ensure the unimpeded flow of non-military goods to the civilian population of the Vanni. 

In any event, contrary to what the LTTE says there is no ban on, or restriction on the supply of, any goods essential to the people of the Vanni. A ban exists only on 21 items identified as being capable of use for military purposes. These have been banned since the day after the LTTE broke the last agreed cessation of hostilities and resumed fighting on April 19, 1995. This list is set out in Government Gazette no: 867/12 of 20th April, 1995. Reasonable observers will note that none of those items (arms, explosives, remote control devices, binoculars, telescopes and compasses, barbed wire, oxygen welding equipment etc.) could conceivably be essential in the daily life of the people. In contrast to the LTTE’s allegation that the implementation of the Norwegian initiative is being deliberately delayed by the Government, in March this year, while the Norwegian initiative was in progress, the military commanders on the ground in the Vanni permitted the unrestricted supply of certain items, the supply of which had earlier been restricted but never banned. These included a range of 22 items including chocolates and instant noodles which are well known to constitute the dry ration packs of guerrilla fighters operating in the jungles, but are scarcely essential for the daily sustenance of the people of the Vanni. 

Further, it is indeed strange that while the LTTE talks of the “draconian embargo on food, medicine and fuel”, subjecting the people of the Vanni to immense suffering, the World Food Programme, for instance, and several other international organisations carrying out relief work in the Vanni have not complained of such shortages as affecting the lives of the people. 

In fact, it must be stated that far from the Vanni facing severe food shortages there is today a regular flow of consumer goods such as rice and other agricultural produce from the Vanni to other areas of Sri Lanka, arranged by the Commissioner General of Essential Supplies after purchase from producers in the Vanni. In recent weeks, this supply has reached the level of nearly 50 lorry loads of goods per week. Such an abundance of food items being sent out of the Vanni, the statistics of which are readily available, underscores the blatantly false propaganda being propagated by the LTTE that there is a ban or embargo of any sort on essential supplies to the Vanni. The Government states categorically that no such ban or embargo exists. 

Of late, possibly when the LTTE began contemplating the abandoning of its own cease-fire, it has been spreading stories of the “military persecution of the civilian masses by arrests, detentions without trial, torture, rape, and summary executions”. This is a trumped up litany of horrors that has no foundation in truth. Summary executions are unheard of today, unlike when the LTTE controlled Jaffna. Murder, rape and “disappearances” are the exception under the PA Government and certainly not the rule as was the case under the previous Government. In every case of alleged murder or rape by members of the armed forces, the suspects are quickly brought to trial under the criminal law of the country. The latest example is that of the alleged rape in Mannar, where the suspects have been produced in Court, identified and committed to remand custody pending trial. 

The present Government of Sri Lanka has never evaded its human rights obligations. In fact, in keeping with the true nature and spirit of these obligations the Government has recently shortened the custodial period, or period of detention of a person before being produced before a magistrate, under Emergency Regulations. Further the Government is now studying the possibility of making amendments to the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) to introduce judicial supervision of detainees. 

The Government rejects most emphatically the statement of the LTTE that the “Kumaratunga Government which is dominated by ultra-nationalist and chauvinistic elements, is not genuinely interested in resolving the ethnic conflict through peaceful means and therefore has been refusing to take any practical steps towards peace”. The people of Sri Lanka know, the world knows and only a cynical disdain for the facts prevents the LTTE from acknowledging, that no Government since independence in Sri Lanka has been more committed to peace than that of President Kumaratunga. It is necessary to recall some essential facts. 

The People’s Alliance led by Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga campaigned in the August 1994 General Election on a platform of peace. No sooner she became Prime Minister after that election she permitted a large number of items, banned under the previous Government, to be sent to the North and East, and thereby initiated the peace process. Her campaign for the Presidency in November 1994 was also based on the urgent need for peace. She and her Government did not waste time after that electoral success, in which she gathered over 62% of the votes polled, to proceed with the peace initiative. She invited the LTTE for talks, there was a cessation of hostilities, and talks were held in Jaffna which was then occupied by the LTTE. When she began to urge the LTTE to begin the discussion of substantive political issues, the LTTE responded by going back to war. It was the LTTE that refused steadfastly to accede to President Kumaratunga’s repeated requests to discuss the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the North. Even while it was under LTTE control, pending a political settlement of the causes for war. There was a lengthy exchange of letters between President Kumaratunga and the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. When the LTTE could no longer suppress the momentum for peace initiated by the President and her Government, it unilaterally broke the cessation of hostilities without prior notice and resumed the war on the night of April 19, 1995. In the face of this incontrovertible record, how can the LTTE seriously say that President Kumaratunga's Government is not committed to peace? 

In fact, even after the resumption of hostilities by the LTTE in April 1995, this Government did not abandon the peace process. Indeed, the President took the lead in telling the country of the need for a new Constitution to address the grievances of all the communities of Sri Lanka including the Tamils. Her Government proposed much wider and more meaningful devolution of power in the country than ever before, aimed at fulfilling the aspirations of the Tamil people and others who felt marginalized in the current, outdated, political milieu. 

The LTTE would no doubt like the world to forget the sheer courage, tenacity and commitment that President Kumaratunga displayed when presenting the draft Constitution in Parliament on August 3, 2000, after obtaining the widest degree of consensus among all major political parties. It is necessary to remind the LTTE of the disgusting attempt made by sections of the Opposition to humiliate her in Parliament when she presented the draft Constitution and how, undaunted, she carried on with her task in the face of unprecedented heckling and abuse on the part of those who at the last moment, for narrow political gain, had withdrawn support for the draft Constitution. From the time of independence, President Kumaratunga has been the only Sinhalese leader who has declared openly that the Tamil people have genuine grievances that have to be resolved politically. Without stopping at mere acknowledgement of that fact, she presented a draft Constitution to the country that would have very substantially solved the grievances of the Tamil people. This Constitution is still before the people, and it continues to be strongly supported by President Kumaratunga. 

On the other hand, there are some questions that the LTTE has to answer. From early 1999, after the Norwegian Government had been jointly invited by the parties to play a role in resuscitating the peace process, what was the LTTE’s attitude? The Government had stated over and over again that the doors were always open for talks, even after the LTTE violated the cessation of hostilities and halted the negotiations in April 1995. What was the LTTE’s response? Up to May 2000 when they were at the gates of Jaffna they expressed an arrogant disdain for talks. They made it clear to the Norwegian Government that their goal was the recapture of Jaffna, and not talks about peace. It was only after they failed in their bid to re-take Jaffna, and saw that the people of Jaffna were not with them, and realised that they would have to deal with President Kumaratunga after they had failed to assassinate her and her Government had been re-elected in October 2000 that they came back to the peace process. Is this responsible, decent and acceptable conduct on the part of an organization that claims to be the authentic or preponderant representative of the Tamil people? 

Even after the peace process was resumed, with the assistance of the Norwegians, it has been a case of prevarication and procrastination on the part of the LTTE. That has become its hallmark, as far as negotiations go. 

It is necessary here to quote from what President Kumaratunga said in 1998, in addressing the nation on the 50th anniversary of our independence. 

“We have missed many chances. We must not miss this one last moment rich with opportunity. May I predict with certainty that this 51st year of Independence will be the most decisive one for free Lanka. In this year we must continue to commit ourselves to end the ethnic strife, while defending the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. I dare say that 50 years is but a brief moment in our history of over 2500 years. Yet, it is well enough time, for a nation, to attain political maturity and to formulate and implement systems to strengthen its nationhood, uniting all the peoples living within it, whilst ensuring its territorial integrity, and to have attained economic and social advancement in order that the newly won political freedom transforms itself into a full freedom for its people - freedom from fear, from poverty, from ignorance, from disease and most of all freedom to be equal and live with dignity and self respect”. 

Are those the words of a war monger, a person who is not totally dedicated to the cause of peace and equality in our land? 

In November, 2000, the LTTE leader, at a meeting in the Vanni with the Norwegian representatives, offered to open a dialogue for peace “with no conditions attached”. Later, the LTTE began to place obstacles in the way of negotiations variously described as “pre-conditions”, “pre-requisites” and “concerns”. What does this attitude reveal? Can the Government of Sri Lanka be blamed for concluding that the LTTE is still bent on the pursuit of war? 

There is ample evidence that over the past months, under the cover of its unilateral cease-fire, the LTTE has been training, arming and supplying its cadres. Arms and ammunitions have been, and are being, landed by sea. Under the definition of terrorism now, universally accepted by the international community of States, the pursuit of any objective however worthy, by violent means, is terrorism. The LTTE practices classic terrorism. 

The Government of Sri Lanka is at war with an enemy that uses terrorism as its main weapon to challenge the territorial integrity of the State and the safety of its citizens. The Government is convinced that the LTTE’s goal of separation is not a shared aspiration of the Tamil people of Sri Lanka.

The Government maintains that mere gestures towards peace, such as cease-fires are unnecessary. In the Government’s view, as it stated in its press release of December 12, 2000, “.the crucial political issues that affect the future of Sri Lanka should not be evaded any longer. The Government states that political talks with the LTTE, aimed at resolving the conflict, can and should begin forthwith. This requires that the LTTE agree that the core issues should comprise the agenda of negotiations. The core issues, as the Government has consistently maintained, are:- the stoppage of war, the stoppage of all terrorist killings, the resolution of the Tamil people’s problems through negotiated political settlement and a speedy resolution of the problems of those displaced by war, etc.”. The Government remains of that view. 

In the concluding paragraph of its statement concerning the non-extension of its unilateral cease-fire, the LTTE says that it “remains seriously committed to peace and to peacefully resolving the protracted ethnic conflict”, and that it “will continue to support and co-operate in every way with the Norwegian Government in its untiring and noble effort to bring about peace and a negotiated political settlement to the Tamil national conflict”. If this statement is genuine it is most welcome.

The Government too earnestly wishes to commence political negotiations to bring the war to an end. 

This Government wishes to reiterate that it has never believed in the use of violence for the resolution of any problem. It has from the beginning made every endeavour to persuade the LTTE to halt armed hostilities and to engage in dialogue with a view to resolving the problems which have caused the military conflict. The Government continues to be committed to this policy. This Government is acutely aware, and has already said so, that there are difficulties faced by the civilian population, in conflict areas, in the North and East. This is due to the inescapable fact that there is an on-going war for which the LTTE bears a heavy responsibility. This Government wishes to remind the LTTE leader that it has taken every possible step to improve the conditions of civilian life in areas under Government control. It has to be emphasised that it is the LTTE that has constantly disrupted the supply of goods and services to the people in the Northern and Eastern provinces. The Government is of the view that issues concerning the early normalisation of civilian life could also be discussed in the course of the proposed talks. 

For some weeks the Government has been ready, and remains ready today, to finalise and formalise the document on the implementation of humanitarian measures, to commence the implementation of these measures with the assistance of monitors, to commence political negotiations at the earliest possible agreed date and pursue them expeditiously. 

The Government of Sri Lanka repeats its call to the LTTE to engage honestly and swiftly in commencing the process of negotiation, and not to squander, yet again, a valuable opportunity for peace, and hopes that even now the LTTE would commit itself to helping the Tamil people to achieve their real aspirations. (End)

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