Negotiated peace should address three factors – Professor Gamini Keerawella
[September 30, 2002  - 12.00 GMT]

“A negotiated peace would necessarily have to address three factors; an end to the war, the causes that led to the war and the consequences of the war including decommissioning and rehabilitation,” said Professor Gamini Keerawella, Professor of History at the University of Peradeniya and former Secretary to the Ministry of National Integration and Ethnic Affairs. He was responding to a question posed by the PRIU on the current status of the peace process.

He said that the peace process has reached its the present stage because of the PA’s policies on the ethnic crisis. Professor Keerawella explained that soon after assuming power President Kumaratunga had initiated discussions with the LTTE on negotiating a settlement, which went on till the LTTE declared Ealam War III in April 1995. 

Analysing the LTTE’s current status quo Professor Keerawella said that a combination of events including the  policies adopted by the PA, the post September 11 situation, the Muslim factor and its implications and the change of stance or the shift of the Tamil bourgeois or the Multi National Business Community among the Diaspora from the TULF to the LTTE.

He said that he was of the view the Govt and the LTTE have a community of interest to prolong the status of the no-war situation. He said that he felt the LTTE might not even be interested in an immediate interim administration, since it would involve setting up of uncomfortable parameters for itself such as the inclusion of other components viz  Muslim/Sinhala elements into their current de-facto administration.

General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) Maithripala Sirisena lamented the silence regarding the official position. “We have no intimation of the official position with regard to the discussions in Thailand,” he said. “All we know is what we learn from the media. The media have reported that Anton Balasingham has said that they would begin from their position at the Thimpu talks.”

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Last Updated Date: September 30, 2002  - 12.00 GMT.