The festering ethnic conflict in the island nation of Sri Lanka receives little attention here, but recurrent bouts of violence there between the government and minority Tamils have taken 70,000 lives since 1983. And now, after a suicide bomber killed the deputy chief of the Sri Lankan army Monday, there is reason to fear that an already tattered cease-fire signed in February 2002, between the government and the rebel Tamil Tigers is about to be submerged in another round of bloodshed.

There have been helpful calls for restraint from the outside world. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has called on both sides to return to peace talks under Norway''s auspices. The Norwegian government''s special envoy has admirably pledged to persist in Norway''s mediation efforts, saying: ``Norway remains committed to Sri Lanka in good times and bad times." But international mediators and cease-fire monitors can do only so much if the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse of Sri Lanka and Tamil Tiger leaders do not act to prevent a renewal of civil war and forge a durable peace agreement.

At present, the two sides appear far apart. The memory of old atrocities seems to overwhelm a recognition of the need to accept compromises for the sake of peace. Tamils harbor deep and justified grievances over the discrimination they have suffered at the hands of the Sinhalese majority. The suicide bombings and assassinations carried out by the Tigers over the years have left government officials and many Sinhalese so fixated on their exposure to terrorist violence that they ignore the injustices Tamil civilians in the north and east of the island have suffered.

A political solution is needed. It will have to include a new constitutional arrangement that frees Tamils in the northeast from submission to the Sinhalese-dominated central government. The assistant US secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs, Richard Boucher, offered a useful outline of such a solution this month in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, when he said: ``Though we reject the methods that the Tamil Tigers have used, there are legitimate issues raised by the Tamil community and they have a very legitimate desire, as anybody would, to control their own lives, to rule their own destinies, and to govern themselves in their homeland, in the areas they''ve traditionally inhabited."

This acknowledgment of a Tamil right to self-rule in their own homeland marks a welcome evolution in US policy. The international community should press the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers alike to come to the negotiating table in Oslo and work out a loose confederation that retains Sri Lanka''s unity, grants the Tamil northeast self-governing autonomy, and puts an end to the island''s long agony.

Editorial published June 29, 2006.

Extinguishing the heat and hatreds caused by a bitter civil war takes time and a commitment on all sides to make peace work. Both now seem to be in short supply in Sri Lanka, which is sliding towards levels of violence not seen in that country since a ceasefire brought conflict to an end in 2002. Yesterday’s landmine attack on a bus in a mainly Sinhalese part of the country, which killed 62 people, including 15 children, and wounded 78 others, was much the most serious incident so far in a conflict that is returning rapidly into all-out war. The government’s response, indiscriminate “deterrent” air strikes on the Tamil north-east of the country, was a bleak sign of what may be to come: a sterile, sustained battle between two heavily-armed sides, neither of which can ever hope to win outright.

Between 1983, when fighting began, and 2002, some 65,000 people were killed. Under international pressure, and a recognition on both sides that a compromise had to be reached, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sinhalese-dominated government reached a ceasefire that brought peace to the country but which did little to settle its constitutional future. That uncertainty, together with splits in the Tigers and an election last year that hardened the government’s nationalist stance, has eroded hopes that a stable settlement could be reached. Attempts at talks, led by the Norwegians, have been hampered by the EU’s recent decision to declare the Tigers a terrorist organisation (which has diminished trust) and by attacks on the ground.

Yesterday’s bombing - although denied by the Tigers- looks like their work, which will only make restarting talks harder. But both sides still say they want to find a workable agreement. This will have to involve concessions from both sides, although the Tamils have already made the biggest one of all by making a form of self-rule, rather than independence, their aim. The Sri Lankan government has done much less than it could have done to persuade Sinhalese voters, who make up 74% of the population, that will they have to give some ground, offering a much greater level of devolution than they have so far. Until the government engages properly, the talks will be empty ones, a route to a temporary deal rather than anything better. Yesterday’s airstrikes were a pointless response to a pointless terrorist attack. They were also a deeply alarming warning about the sad risk of civil war in an astonishing and beautiful country, of which it was once said that “only man is vile”.

Editorial published June 16, 2006.

Last week UNICEF finally “called for immediate action to halt the abduction and forced recruitment of children by the Karuuna group.” UNICEF’s gesture, although somewhat late in the day, is appreciated - as are all such moved by the plethora of international actors who take an interest in the Tamil situation. But the timing of UNICEF’s statement is noteworthy. For, like other Sri Lanka observers, UNICEF has known about the Army-backed Karuna Group’s forcible recruitment of teenagers for at least the fifteen months before its June 2006 statement.

In any case, in November 2005, the matter was directly raised by the Tamil Diaspora organisation, the International Federation of Tamils (IFT), which issued a press release unambiguously titled: “Sri Lankan Army accused of abduction and forced military training of children from army controlled Tamil areas.” It was based, moreover, on the personal accounts of three former child soldiers who had been kidnapped by Karuna Group paramilitaries and held in Sri Lanka Army camps in the east.

The IFT followed up its press release with a complaint to the UN’s Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children & Armed Conflict. The complaint was copied to UNICEF and the Coalition to Stop the use of child soldiers, among others. The youth, who had surrendered to the Liberation Tigers having deserted the paramilitaries when they were sent out on missions, are available for interview and cross examination.

But there was absolutely no interest whatsoever. Indeed, no response. The complaint wasn’t even acknowledged.

The lack of response was astonishing not least because the complaint was supported by examinable evidence. Moreover, the accusations were not new to Sri Lankans or the UN agencies. There had been reports and photographs in the Colombo press as far back as early 2005. On March 20, The Sunday Leader newspaper carried an article titled ‘Karuna camp in govt. controlled area.’ On the subject of child soldiers, the article said “(Sri Lankan) Military sources said that they believed that around 60 cadres operated out of Thivichchenei including under-aged cadres. While The Sunday Leader was at the village entrance, a youth who appeared to be around 12 years walked past carrying a firearm and ammunition.”

Amid reports that Tamil children in Sri Lanka Army controlled areas were being abducted or openly being seized by unidentified gunmen, the Liberation Tigers were repeatedly blamed. Not once did UNICEF acknowledge that anti-LTTE paramilitary groups operating in government controlled areas were responsible.

One would not normally expect a United Nations agency tasked with the protection of the interests of children to willingly turn a blind eye to the issue of child soldiers, particularly where the armed forces of a member government are allegedly involved.

But UNICEF said absolutely nothing on the subject of the Karuna Group’s use of child soliders until June 2006, over one year later. In the intervening period, as it had done in the past the agency continued to issue press releases blaming the LTTE, refusing to acknowledge the movement’s efforts to investigate and address complaints against it.

In fact, in the wake of Sri Lankan press reports of Karuna Group activities being stepped up in the east, UNICEF pointed a finger at the LTTE instead. “In June this year, there were 18 cases of child recruitment reported from the eastern Batticaloa region and in July so far we have received complaints of 28 cases in the same area,” Jeffrey Keele, UNICEF spokesperson, told the BBC in 2005. Batticaloa is, of course, where the Karuna Group is predominantly active.

The UNICEF statement was especially puzzling. To begin with, the LTTE, which had been negotiating on a tsunami aid-sharing mechanism, was said to be urgently seeking international legitimacy for their administration. It seemed contradictory that it would step up recruitment of under-18s at the same time.

From a pragmatic perspective, such moves defied logic. The Sri Lanka armed forces were recruiting heavily and acquiring weaponry from abroad. International actors were reiterating their support for the Colombo government. Could the forcible recruitment of a few dozen teenagers be the LTTE’s build up for a war?

And all this amidst persistent claims, both in the Sri Lankan media and by Tamil organisations, that Army-backed paramilitaries were responsible. This is not to deny that the LTTE has recruited fighters under the age of 18, but to ask why the movement was being singled out.

Some suggested that UNICEF was resorting to ‘bashing the Tiger’ in response to strong and understandable criticism from Sinhala rightwingers that its staffers, like those of other NGOs, were riding the gravy train in Sri Lanka. Indeed, Tamil aid workers had joined the chorus of protest at the enormous overheads that their international colleagues seemed to labour under. Amid reports of UN staffers living the high life in Colombo – even, it is alleged, barely days after the December 2004 tsunami, there were grumbles about the gleaming fleet of vehicles many INGOs race about the Northeast in.

Pique at the Tamil criticism and hope of ingratiating itself with strident Sinhala critics, some argue, were a key motivator in UNICEF’s Nelsonian approach to underage recruitment by the Karuna Group – which, as Sri Lanka watchers know, is a darling of the southern nationalist press.

The question here, is about UNICEF’s commitment to the principles enshrined in the ‘Rights of the Child.’ Many argue that the UN agencies – and many other NGOs – operate in a broad framework dedicated to preserving the status quo vis-à-vis states and non-state challengers. In short, that in Sri Lanka (and probably elsewhere), UNICEF is playing political football with the emotive and sensitive issue of children’s rights. Apart from its own local interests, UNICEF’s Tiger-bashing serves the wider geopolitical interests of key international actors.

UNICEF is not alone in this regard. Many ‘expert’ organisations involved in ‘promoting/defending child rights’ in Sri Lanka operate in a similar framework. Before going further, I am not denying the presence of under-18s in LTTE ranks – the movement itself regularly releases batches of under-age fighters and attempts to engage with UNICEF and other actors on the problem.

The point here is that all these efforts are ultimately futile, because none of the international actors are interested in the actual facts. An illustrative example is what happened when I recently met with a well known London-based international affairs think-tank. The Asia desk head – who is also a consultant to Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers – claimed expertise on Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers and on child soldiers in particular. But not only had she never been to the North or East, she had little hard data to back up her assertions against the LTTE. Simple questions as to how many under-18s were in LTTE ranks, of these how many were under-16s, how many were forcibly recruited, how many had joined out of poverty or after suffering violence by armed forces, how many were in combat units as opposed to civil administration, etc could not be answered. The point here is that these does not prevent this analyst from being an expert on ‘the LTTE and its use of child soldiers.’

There is also a key discrepancy that underscores the role UNICEF and the logic of child soldiers plays in reinforcing the international pro-state status quo. Not recruiting under-18s is supposed to be a universal standard of behaviour. But the UN applies different age standards to state and non-state armies. State armies can may not recruit persons under sixteen years, whereas non-state armies may not recruit below eighteen.

Of course, this has been criticised by some – and by no means all - those campaigning on child soldiers (indeed when asked for her views, the Asia Desk head tartly pointed out I should ask the UN that). But, by any standard, the criticism is mild compared to that levelled against organisations like the LTTE. Equally there is much readiness to accept government’s justification for breaching the ‘universal’ norm. One former UN staffer told me that when Britain was asked to explain its recruitment practices, her Ambassador simply declared that in British culture, there was nothing wrong with taking recruits in at the age of sixteen.

This ready acceptance of contextual peculiarities, however, does not extend to all actors. That there are a myriad reasons, both structurally underlying and immediately motivating, for which Tamil youth join the LTTE are irrelevant to those campaigning against the movement. There is a concomitant lack of interest in acquiring an understanding either. The experts are short on facts and numbers, but their views are emphatic. And in the international regime against child soldiers, that’s apparently not problematic.

To return to the silence over the Karuna Group’s forcible recruitment of children, international interests are at play here too. To begin, with Karuna is part of the ‘democratic’ alternatives that the international community insists the Tamils are backing. Given the repeatedly alleged link between the paramilitaries and the Sri Lankan armed forces, how could the United States stand emphatically behind an army complicit in the abduction and conscription of child soldiers? Just this week an Indian website ran a story that Tamil paramilitaries are recruiting children from refugee camps and orphanages in southern India – how are these recruits being moved into Sri Lanka without the knowledge of both governments?

The question, meanwhile, is what does all this mean for the ‘standard’ of not recruiting children?

The LTTE having agreed to comply with UN standards in the context of the peace process, finds itself frustrated by the deliberate refusal to recognise its efforts - it even gets blamed for the child recruitment by its enemy. Conversely, the paramilitaries, secure that their violations will be ignored as part of the wider objective of countering the LTTE, will continue their recruitment – last week, Tamil paramilitaries accompanied by Sri Lanka troops openly abducted over a hundred teenagers in a brazen breach of UN ‘standards.’

Against this backdrop one can speculate as to why UNICEF would link the Karuna Group and child soldiers now - as opposed to say November 2005 when Tamil activists were hammering on UN doors, and there was much more hope for the peace process. To begin with, the ultimate political sanction has been served on the LTTE – it has been proscribed by the European Union, leaving pretty much little by way of further political coercion. Yet the violence is not decreasing, but escalating.

Yet it is difficult to bring open pressure on the Sri Lankan state – in the wake of the EU ban, there is no longer much incentive for Colombo to reign in the paramilitaries or, for that matter, their armed forces. Frustration with Sri Lanka’s ability to play in step within a broader international framework to contain the LTTE, key international actors are starting to exert pressure. The sense – voiced by many sympathetic to the Sri Lankan government - that the Karuna Group and covert operations sections of the military are operating free of political authority may also be playing a role. Note the EU’s threat it is now considering proscribing the Karuna Group – apparently murdering a Tamil parliamentarian in Church at Christmas Mass was not quite reason enough.

On a concluding note, it must be remembered that UNICEF’s brief is not child soldiers alone, but the welfare of children. In this regard, UNICEF, whilst focusing on the thousand or so under-18s it says are in the LTTE’s ranks, has still not got around doing anything about the child rights issues faced by the many hundreds of thousand of Tamil children in the Northeast: a large population of children live in refugee camps, few schools function normally, many – particularly teenage girls - run a gauntlet of Sri Lankan troops every day.

But we shouldn’t expect this to change. It is simply not in the interests of UNICEF’s stakeholders right now. The ‘Rights of the Child’ is not a universal standard that is to be extended to the Tamils; it is merely a stick to beat them with when convenient.

The Liberation Tigers’ insistence that the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) would need to be reconstituted to only contain representatives from countries that do not criminalise the LTTE has been met with some surprise by the Norwegian facilitators and the international community at large. But prior to the proscription of the organisation by the European Union (EU), the LTTE had informed the Nordic facilitators that they could not allow representatives from countries that had deemed the LTTE an illegal organisation to participate in such a vital observer mission.

The startled response by the Norwegian facilitators to the LTTE’s request in Oslo to reconstitute the SLMM following the EU’s designation of the organisation as a terrorist organisation can only be interpreted as a gross diplomatic miscalculation on the part of the Nordic facilitators. The subsequent bout of frenzied diplomacy has bought the SLMM some more time to find its new participants (the LTTE has agreed to two months, not one, as opposed to the six asked for by Norway) but failed to waive the LTTE from its principled position that proscription is the highest form of political aggression available and states which choose to apply such policy tools to it should be limited from meaningfully participating in resolving the island’s conflict.

This was first of a number of faux pas by the facilitators in engaging with the organisation. Another major blunder was the failure to understand the seriousness of the LTTE’s repeated requests to the SLMM to either desist from placing monitors on Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) vessels or to place monitors on LTTE vessels as well. The LTTE had reasoned that the monitors were being used as human shields by the Sri Lankan military as it transports supplies and personnel to Jaffna and, more recently, attacked Sea Tiger vessels on training exercise.

The SLMM’s actions placed the LTTE at a tactical disadvantage and the organisation had requested that the situation was untenable. In what can only be assumed was an act of brinksmanship the facilitators ignored the LTTE requests – issued three times. Events came to ahead when, following an attack on the Sea Tigers whilst on manoeuvres near their coast, the LTTE attacked an SLN convoy in late May.

Two SLN gunboats were destroyed. But the Sea Tigers’ attack on the troop transport, MV Pearl Cruise was called off following frantic SLMM calls to Kilinochchi to alerting the LTTE high command that the vessel had SLMM members on board. Contrary to reports in the southern media, it was the presence of SLMM monitors that save the Pearl Cruise, not valiant counterattacks by the SLN.

In the subsequent media release the SLMM made sweeping assertions that according to the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) LTTE had no claims to the sea. However, this interpretation contradicted earlier rulings by the SLMM (indeed former SLMM chief Maj. Gen. Trygve Tellefson was removed at Colombo’s insistence when he attempted to work out an arrangement to separate forces at sea). The matter was taken up forcefully by the LTTE in Oslo and the SLMM backtracked, agreeing no longer to post its monitors on SLN vessels.

And these are not the only times the Norwegian facilitators have, unwittingly or otherwise, tested the resolve of the LTTE in demanding complete parity in the peace process. In April 2003, Norway was a key organiser of an international aid conference. It was held in Washington, even though the LTTE would not be able to attend due to its proscription in the US. The LTTE’s subsequent ‘temporary’ withdrawal from peace talks prompted another bout of frantic – but unsuccessful - diplomatic activity to cajole or coerce the Tigers back to the table.

Norway is largely a conduit for the collective policies of a number of international actors involved in Sri Lanka. Nordic representatives no doubt offer their expert opinion on matters concerning the two protagonists, the LTTE and the Sri Lankan state, but are also helpless once these key international actors decide on a specific course of action. Whilst some veteran Norwegian diplomats know the LTTE and its mindset quite well, they ultimately operate within international strategies.

It is therefore important to understand the logic from which the international community is approaching the LTTE. The primary myth that needs dispelling is that the LTTE engaged in the peace process as a consequence of post 9/11 policy shifts. The flaws in that axiom have become increasingly clear this year. It was the result of the November 2001 elections that resulted in the LTTE’s shift in policy - President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government was simply not prepared to engage in any peace effort.

Therefore, regardless of the policies of the international community, the LTTE would not have engaged in a peace process with the People’s Alliance had it returned to power in the 2001 polls - the (now no longer) secretive talks between the opposition United National Party and the LTTE formed the basis for the beginning of the ‘public’ peace process in early 2002.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had pledged to deliver real changes to the Tamils of the North-East and, with the facilitation of the international community via the Norwegians, the LTTE had expected the peace process to provide a suitable forum to address Tamil grievances and, more pressingly, to deliver the much needed rehabilitation to the war torn North-East.

But hostile military commanders and hardline elements in the South, including President Kumaratunga, impeded the progress. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe prevaricated also, refusing to mobilise international support to overcome these resistors.

The LTTE for its part engaged with the spectrum of international actors, from several states to non-governmental organisations and watchdogs. LTTE delegations went abroad, seeking advice and expertise on their legal systems, human rights, and a better understanding of constitutional law, all essential ingredients for arriving at a solution to the conflict.

Yet over the next five years, the Tamils and the international community observed the collective failure of the Sri Lankan political system to deliver on a single agreement made with the LTTE. The final straw was the torpedoing of the Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure (P-TOMS) by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court that deemed it unconstitutional to share aid with the LTTE and, thus, the Northeast.

The willingness of both the UNP government and the international community to circumvent Sri Lanka’s constitution to engage the LTTE at the outset of the peace process dissipated when it came to implementing agreements reached with the LTTE.

The debacle of the Washington donor conference served to confirm Tamil suspicions that this was not a peace process of equals with the objective of addressing their legitimate grievances. Instead it transformed gradually from an engagement at parity to a pro-state one process, where the government could renege on its agreements with little or no consequence. Indeed, diplomatic pressure on the state would only occur from time to time when the peace process was deemed to be in absolute jeopardy.

And following the tsunami of December 2004 this shift away from parity towards the state became more marked. The overwhelming assumptions amidst the international community - fuelled by the Sri Lankan state - was that, following the Karuna defection and the tsunami, the LTTE was now a shell of its former self and that political and aid concessions were no longer necessary to keep it in the peace process.’

This perception resulted in a complete reversion to type amongst international policy makers. The situation was once again analogous to other conflicts between state and non-state actors: the generally weaker non-state actor is invariably pressured to concede to watered down agreements ‘lest the peace process fails’ and the state actor unleashes further violence against it.

The modus operandi for such situations was relatively straightforward: use aid, (promise of legitimacy) and, where necessary, violence by the state to extract concessions from the non-state actor. The Sri Lankan state was therefore funded liberally, the military given external training and substantial breaches of the truce largely ignored.

Even the expansion of the paramilitary forces, especially the Karuna group, was tacitly accepted, given the overall objective of coercing the LTTE to the table. As was the murderous campaign unleashed by the paramilitaries against LTTE cadres and supporters.

It was the alarming deadline set by LTTE leader Vellupillai Pirapaharan during his annual Heroes Day speech that suggested that the LTTE was not willing to meekly go along with this diffuse form of coercion. In particular, the subsequent rise in tit-for-tat violence between the state’s paramilitaries and the LTTE demanded that the international community revisit the conceptual paradigm from which they were working.

But then the LTTE offered another (but in its view final) opportunity to salvage the peace process by attending ‘ceasefire’ talks in Geneva in February. This must have been interpreted once again as a sign of weakness. The collective international silence over assassination of a Tamil politician in Trincomalee six weeks after the Geneva talks by suspected state backed paramilitaries reveals international assumptions.

If the key international actors had wished to maintain the parity in the peace process they would have acted swiftly and effectively against the state for failing to end the paramilitary campaign, for not facilitating the transfer of LTTE eastern commanders for a pre-Geneva 2 conference, for not allowing LTTE political cadres back into government-controlled areas.

Instead, as the tit-for-tat violence escalated in the wake of Vanniasingham Vignaswaran’s assassination, first Canada, and then the EU proscribed the LTTE. These moves, particularly the EU’s, were clearly intended to intimidate the LTTE into ending its violence and returning to the table. The state received, at worst, polite admonishments. Instead, the LTTE has demanded EU monitors quit their roles on the island and has began mobilising for what it warns will be an inevitable war if Sri Lanka is not restrained.

A brief study of the LTTE’s history will reveal that there is very little militarily or politically which the organisation considers daunting. This is with good reason. Unlike other armed non-state actors, the LTTE has transformed itself from a guerrilla organisation to a semi-state administration without a single international state ally and under near-continuous conditions of war. Consequently, its dependencies, long term calculations and, thus determination, are quite different. Attempting to affect the organisation’s policies by using the deterrents applied to guerrilla movements elsewhere is unlikely to elicit the same response.

There was widespread acceptance of (battlefield) parity between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan state at the outset of the peace process, which resulted in relatively successful initial progress. It was arguably the failure to maintain equal pressure on both protagonists that resulted in the peace process stalling. The failure occurred because at some point the international community assumed that it was no longer necessary to apply the concept of parity to resolving the Tamil question. It may have been a sense of LTTE vulnerability following Karuna’s defection or perhaps after the tsunami, perhaps both. In any case, this turning point sowed the seeds of Norwegian peace process’s disintegration.

It is fairly clear, therefore, how the peace process can be recovered. Parity needs to be restored. This would include going outside Sri Lanka’s constitutions to engage with the LTTE. It would require sanctions (economic, diplomat and political) against the Sri Lankan state to get it to be serious about power- sharing and the provision of direct aid to the Northeast to ensure rehabilitation is not impaired by southern bureaucracy. In short, the strategic parity between the protagonists needs to be restored.

The international community moan that there is little they can do to curb the hard liners on both sides. This is an duplicitous excuse to avoid taking an even handed approach. There is plainly a lot the donor community could have done and still could do. However it lacks the will. But parity is the foremost principle behind ensuring peace in Sri Lanka. International actors need to disavow themselves of their assumptions about dealing with non-state and state actors. Particularly when it comes to resolving Sri Lanka’s ethnic question, they need to commit to the notion of parity - much like when maintaining peace between rival states.

Political parties in Tamil Nadu this week criticised India’s sale of radars to Sri Lanka, saying the Colombo government would use them in its crackdown against the country’s Tamil population, IANS reported.

“There are reports that the Indian government is providing radars to the Sri Lankan government, which is waging an undeclared war on Tamils in the island nation and carrying out attacks on civilians,” T. Thirumavalavan of the Dalit Panthers of India (DPI) said.

The DPI, which has called for a protest rally July 8, said several ‘like-minded organisations’ would take part in it.

The DPI and the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), both allies of the an ally of the opposition All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) are strident supporters of the LTTE and Sri Lankan Tamils.

Meanwhile, Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), an ally of the ruling Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam (DMK), also criticised the radar sale Tuesday. Its leader, S. Ramadoss, urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to stop the sale.

“This partisan action of the central government is against the sentiments of the people of Tamil Nadu,” Thirumavalavan said, adding that it amounted to “abetting the killing of Sri Lankan Tamils.”

He also alleged the Indian government was ‘toeing the US line’ on the Sri Lankan issue.

The Hindu newspaper reported over the weekend that India has resumed its defence ties with Sri Lanka with the commissioning of two military radars to secure the island-nation against low-level aerial attacks after a gap of six years.

The decision to gift the indigenously made Indra radars was made late last year following reports that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was scouting the global arms market for air assets, the paper said.

At present, the LTTE is believed to possess a couple of micro light aircraft. It had also developed two airstrips in the area under its control.

The last time India provided military capabilities to Sri Lanka was in 2000, when it gifted a fast attack craft, to help maintain sea dominance in general and check LTTE activities in particular.

Confirming the installation of the radars, non-military sources told The Hindu the gift fell under the category of “defensive and non-lethal equipment” and was in line with India’s policy to help the militaries of neighbouring countries to counter threats from non-state actors.

India had generally refrained from extending military assistance to Sri Lanka after stopping supplies in the mid-1980s, The Hindu said. But the paper’s sources “were unable to say” if the current transfer by the Indian Air Force would mark the beginning of the supply of more “non-lethal and defensive military” equipment to Sri Lanka.

The Hindu newspaper also quoted sources as saying India recently gifted a warship to the Maldives to patrol its island territories more effectively and that similar assistance was being provided or would be given to other neighbouring countries such as Seychelles, the Mauritius and Myanmar.

Radars that could locate artillery and mortar gun positions across the border were the first Government-to-Government sale by the United States to India after sanctions were lifted in 2000.

Internationally, even Japan was considering lifting its 60-year-old ban on military sales by gifting frigates stripped of their weaponry to some South-East Asian countries to help counter threats from pirates and poachers.

The decision to gift the radars was taken on the eve of Sri Lankan President Mahendra Rajapakse’s maiden visit to India in December last but was not disclosed by the defence establishment.

In response to a query, however, Defence Ministry sources confirmed to The Hindu the transfer of the radars.

India too is inducting Indra radars under the Air Defence Ground Environment System plan to improve low-level detection capability especially in peninsular India.

India hastened to provide the radars after Pakistan began showing interest in improving Sri Lanka’s aerial detection capabilities. The offer was first made during the former External Affairs Minister, Natwar Singh’s visit to Colombo over a year ago.

The Liberation Tigers’ call this week for India to put the past behind and to take a fresh approach to the Tamil question in Sri Lanka has understandably sparked a frenzy of media interest and not a little controversy in India and elsewhere. The LTTE’s extending of an olive branch to Delhi comes at a crucial time for Sri Lanka and an anxious one for the region; there is little doubt that Sri Lanka is edging towards a resumption of its bloody decades-long war. There were several key messages in the comments by LTTE’s theoretician and chief negotiator, Mr. Anton Balasingham aired on NDTV this week.

The first, which has drawn the most media focus, is his characterisation of the 1991 assassination of former Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi as “a great tragedy, a monumental historical tragedy.” This has, perhaps understandably, dominated headlines and commentary, both in India and elsewhere. Although a reiteration and elaboration of comments made by the LTTE leader, Vellupillai Pirapaharan, in 2002 during his landmark press conference in Kilinochchi, it has been interpreted and misinterpreted by different observers. Some have characterised it as an admission of responsibility. Others have characterised it as an evasion of responsibility. Still others have said it is neither, but a clever ploy to deliberately confuse. A few astute observers have, however, seen it for what it plainly is: a considered and heartfelt expression of regret for a prominent and devastating moment in a long and traumatic period of Tamil-Indian relations, one characterised by thousands of deaths - including Indian soldiers, LTTE fighters and, especially, large numbers of Tamil civilians.

These observers have also grasped the significance of the other messages in Mr. Balasingham’s comments. One is the LTTE’s pledge that “under no circumstances will we act against the interests of the government of India.” The implications of this statement must be considered against a prominent assumption that remains problematically unquestioned: that the LTTE and Tamil political aspirations are inevitably at cross-purposes with India and her national or geopolitical interests. This is not to say that these are identical, but to point out that a just and lasting solution to the Tamil question also equates to regional stability. Another notable LTTE message is for India to get actively involved in resolving the Tamil question. This call for diplomatic and political intervention is a deliberate and radical departure from the uncompromising rejection of Indian involvement that prevailed in the wake of the IPKF fiasco.

Some, observing the developments through the distorting prism of political orthodoxy misunderstood the LTTE’s logic, characterising its olive branch as a desperate measure to curry favour in the wake of the European Union’s ban. This not only unjustifiably gives primacy to a desire for international legitimacy over all other considerations; more importantly, it ignores the LTTE’s own history, that the movement has almost always been internationally alienated. Even the limited contacts of the post-2002 era have more to do with realpolitik (the obvious unavoidability of the LTTE) than with any solidarity with it. The point here is, the LTTE has grown from a handful of fighters to the semi-state it is today despite not having a single international sponsor or ally.

Save one, briefly: India. But as Mr. Balasingham pointed out this week, India’s preparedness in the early 1980s to train LTTE fighters, stemmed primarily from a desire “to protect our people from [Sri Lankan] state oppression.” Now, twenty years later, India is again intervening (albeit diplomatically this time) to protect the Tamils from the Sri Lankan state. In the wake of the extra-judicial and indiscriminate killings of hundreds of civilians, especially in the past few months, a government in Delhi is again pressuring a government in Colombo to restrain its armed forces. Following the killing of a top Sri Lankan General by a suicide bomber this week, there can be no doubt that President Mahinda Rajapakse’s cotorie of Sinhala ultra-nationalists are straining to lash out again with airstrikes and artillery. But they dare not, for fear of antagonising India, which only last week delivered a blunt warning against such violence. It is in this context, where India again has to increasingly intervene in Sri Lanka to restrain a Sinhala government from savaging the island’s Tamils, that the LTTE, explicitly hailing Delhi’s efforts in this regard, has called for a new beginning, one that can lead to a just and lasting solution and stability in the region. In short, securing the island’s Tamils and ensuring their rights are restored and safeguarded is a goal behind which both the LTTE and India are separately, but simultaneously, once again aligned.

The Liberation Tigers this week called on the India government to put their mutual acrimonious past behind and to take a fresh approach to the Tamil question in Sri Lanka.

In an extensive interview with an Indian television channel, the LTTE’s theoretician and Chief Negotiator, Mr. Anton Balasingham, sought a ‘new relationship’ with India so that the south Asian giant could play an ‘active role’ to resolve the Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict.

In comments that sparked a frenzy of media interest in India and not a little controversy, Mr. Balasingham said that the assassination of former Premier Rajiv Gandhi, which India blamed on the LTTE, was “a great tragedy, a monumental historical tragedy.”

Saying “we call upon the Government of India and people of India to be magnanimous to put the past behind and to approach the ethnic question in a different perspective,” Mr. Balasingham said the event has to be seen in its political and historical context of the time, involving the military intervention of India and a war between the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) and the LTTE in the late eighties.

Mr. Balasingham’s comments came in extracts of a lengthy interview to NDTV, a privately owned Indian channel which interviewed the LTTE ideologue on Sunday. The full interview is to be broadcast in the coming days, but an extract broadcast Tuesday carried both the LTTE’s expression of regret over the Gandhi assassination and its call for Delhi to take a more evenhanded and active role in Sri Lanka.

Mr. Balasingham also welcomed the Manmohan Singh government’s tough stand against the killing of Tamil civilians by Sri Lanka’s armed forces and Delhi’s support for autonomy for the Tamils of Sri Lanka as a solution to the island’s conflict.

Saying India had “played a detached role” in Sri Lankan affairs since the assassination of Mr. Gandhi, Mr. Balasingham said “what we feel is India should actively involve in the peace process.”

“India has been silent for the last 15 years and adopted a detached role. Now (that) there is possibility of war emerging [in Sri Lanka], so she can’t keep quiet but she has to face challenges... and to adopt ... orientate a new foreign policy towards her neighbour for which the relationship between the LTTE and India is crucial.”

In response to a question by NDTV correspondent Noopur Tiwari on whether the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord led to Rajiv Gandhi’s death, Mr. Balasingham said: “No. It happened later on. What has happened is, since we rejected the Sri Lankan accord there were a lot of events that took place creating a gulf between the LTTE and the Govt of India and the Indians later sent an IPKF to disarm the LTTE and eventually broke out into an open confrontation. We fought a guerrilla war against the Indian army for 2 years and finally the Sri Lankans. We had a negotiation with Sri Lanka and secured the withdrawal of the Indian troops in the 90’s and of course finally it was followed by the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.”

“As far as that event is concerned, I would say it is a great tragedy, a monumental historical tragedy for which we deeply regret and we call upon the Govt of India and people of India to be magnanimous to put the past behind and to approach the ethnic question in a different perspective.”

Asked if the LTTE could promise that it would not commit such acts again, Mr. Balasingham went on: “We have made pledges to the government of India that under no circumstances we will act against the interest of the government of India.”

“I think we are prepared to build up a new understanding... a new relationship with the government of India provided she makes a positive gesture and it is up to the government of India because we have already pledged that we will never to do anything or act anything inimical to the geo-political interest of India.

“So if the past is put aside and if a new approach is made, then there is possibility of India playing a positive active role in bringing a resolution to this conflict.”

But Mr. Balasingham underlined that the LTTE did not want from India any “military intervention as has happened in the past” and made it clear nor India cannot play the mediator’s or facilitator’s role as long as it keeps the LTTE outlawed.

He said without “a relationship ... a working relationship between the government of India and the LTTE ... it would be difficult for India to have a mediator’s role.

“The only role which she can play is diplomatically and politically persuading Sri Lanka and LTTE to seek a negotiated settlement rather than involving in a military confrontation. That is what she is doing now.”

“So this kind of intervention ... diplomatic intervention is crucial. It would help to protect our people from (being) subjected to genocidal operations by the Sri Lankan armed forces and also help both the parties to go for a negotiated settlement.”

He agreed that a mass exodus of Tamils from Sri Lanka to India triggered by fresh fighting “will create far-reaching political consequences”. He also referred to appeals from Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi to New Delhi to intervene in Sri Lankan affairs.

“India is responding in that aspect. Therefore as you say India has genuine concerns, geopolitical and national interests in the resolution of this conflict.”

The LTTE ideologue described India as “the regional superpower in South Asia” and said she just cannot ignore “this conflict” in her backyard.

“India has genuine national and geopolitical interest in that region. She has to insure that there is peace and stability in the environment.”

Delhi has not formally responded to the LTTE’s overtures.

Analysts said a snap reaction by a junior minister was not reflective of Delhi’s considerations, particularly given that India’s Junior Foreign Minister Anand Sharma also denied a well known truism: that India had trained and armed the LTTE in the early 1980s.

“The people of India cannot forget the dastardly crime committed by the LTTE or at their behest,” Mr. Sharma told reporters.

“Seeking our forgiveness would be tantamount to endorsing their philosophy of terror, violence and assassination,” said Mr. Sharma, who was a close aide of Gandhi.


The LTTE’s expression of regret is not new - at the April 2002 press conference in Kilinochchi, LTTE leader Vellupillai Pirapaharan also described the Gandhi killing as a ‘thunbiyal’ (sorrowful event).

However, it is the first time that the LTTE has directly called on India to take a pro-active role in resolving the island’s conflict.

Avowed opponents of the LTTE in India reacted furiously to the LTTE’s olive branch, heaping vitriol on the movement and saying it’s expression of regret ‘was nothing new.’

One frequent and vocal critic of the LTTE, Dr. Subramaniam Swamy, took the opportunity, to attack Rajiv Gandhi’s widow and now Congress Party leader, Sonia Gandhi, describing her as “the prime beneficiary” of her husband’s death.

“The widow of Rajiv Gandhi and the prime beneficiary of his assassination, Ms. Sonia Gandhi, have legitimized pro-LTTE political parties in India by openly allying with them in elections and sharing power in government. It is time for the Congress Party to prove it’s bonafides in the assassination by dispatching a commando unit with GPS locator to hunt for Prabhkaran and his associates, and bring them to trial in India,” Dr. Swamy said.

Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a suicide bomber in 1991, a year after the withdrawal of Indian troops that he as Premier in 1987 had despatched to enforce the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord.

The LTTE refused to accept the Accord, but agreed not to oppose it. But after several of its leaders were arrested by the Sri Lanka Navy in defiance of the Accord and committed suicide in military custody, the LTTE halted its surrender of its weapons.

The Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was then ordered to disarm the LTTE by force. The IPKF failed to crush the LTTE and was ordered out by Sri Lankan President R. Premadasa in 1990. By then over one thousand Indian soldiers and 1500 LTTE fighters had died – along with a staggering five thousand Tamil civilians.

Elaborating on the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord itself, Mr. Balasingham told NDTV on Sunday: “We were not very happy with the political solution proposed by India because it did not satisfy the political aspirations of our people. If India has offered a federal solution as she has in her own country then we would have definitely responded positively but the provincial administration suggested by India was totally inadequate to meet the demands of the Tamil people so that’s why we did not support the accord.”

The low-intensity war gripping Sri Lanka’s Northeast continued unabated this week. Dozens of people have been killed in the past few weeks in hundreds of violent incidents. This week, in another escalation of the undeclared conflict underway on the island, the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) stepped up its deep penetration raids into LTTE controlled areas, targeting both civilians and LTTE personnel. The attacks provided the backdrop as the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) published its much-awaited report on both sides’ conduct since talks on the ceasefire concluded in Geneva in February.

The report has been critical of both sides, but has drawn vehement protests by the Sri Lankan government (GoSL) as the SLMM levels a number of key accusations against it, not least that Colombo has ordered troops to block monitors’ movements. In particular, the military, the SLMM says, was restricting their ability to enquire into the activities of paramilitaries - ‘armed groups’ in the SLMM’s noncommittal lexicon. Many voices, including this newspaper, have long protested that the root of the violence in Sri Lanka is the military’s continued support for paramilitaries and their murderous campaign against the LTTE and its supporters. Even now, the SLMM is shy of pointing this out explicitly, but has came impressively close: “There are a number of indications,” the SLMM said, “that the GoSL is actively supporting the Karuna group.” The SLMM also pointed out that although the GoSL pledged in Geneva to end the activities of armed groups, “since then Karuna Group became even more visible in GOSL controlled areas.”

The SLMM’s report is welcome, if nothing else, for confirming what every observer of any worth has always been aware of: “SLA and Army Intelligence are supporting the armed groups.” The SLMM’s credibility was seriously damaged a few weeks ago when it put forward a strong statement accusing the Sri Lanka military of extrajudical killings and then withdrew the statement when Sri Lanka’s government threw a tantrum. It remains to be seen how the SLMM reacts to the Colombo’s howls of protest this week. Press reports say the SLMM has already submitted to Sri Lanka’s pressure by delaying the publication of the report so it wouldn’t embarrass the government before the talks in Oslo last week. Now, much of the impact the report should have had has dissipated, whilst the controversy has further reinforced Tamil suspicions of the SLMM’s neutrality. Norway has asked both GoSL and LTTE to state their views on the future functioning of the SLMM and, indeed, the ceasefire. It remains to be seen what the formal responses will be.

But there can be no doubt the violence will continue. Therefore, the broader question, in terms of promoting peace, ought to be ‘what next?’ It is clear that Sri Lanka will not willingly disarm the paramilitaries. But already the paramilitaries’ killings are only a small part of the violence; direct clashes between both sides at the borders and raids on each other’s territory have become daily occurrences. However, the most serious aspect of the violence is what the SLMM calls ‘a campaign of targeted killings of civilians’ in government-controlled areas. Amongst the most horrific attacks was on a Tamil family of four - father, mother and two children - which was massacred last week. The gratuitous violence in which the children and the father were tortured and then hung while the mother was gangraped and stabbed is indicative of the kind of conflict likely to grip Sri Lanka in the coming period, if nothing is done.

The incident has fuelled Tamil rage, not only at the Sri Lankan state, but the erstwhile champions of human rights, who appear to have lost their voices. The international community is studiously silent on this and other atrocities. The last international intervention in the ‘peace process’ was the European Union’s banning of the LTTE two weeks ago. This newspaper argued (again) then that the EU’s proscription of the LTTE will not produce greater engagement by the both sides in the peace process but instead set in place a dynamic towards war, fuelled by triumph in the Sinhala south and, as is clear now, disillusionment in the north. The level of distrust between the parties is the same as during the bitter conflict years. The question now is whether the international community will act on the SLMM’s report and bring credible pressure to bear on the Sri Lankan state to comply with the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA). We doubt it. In the meantime, Sri Lanka’s military has placed orders worth $250m from Pakistan. There can be little doubt that key international actors are politically and financially supporting these moves. It is as if nothing has changed since Sri Lanka’s ‘War for Peace’ ground to a bloody halt.

One of the common threads of policy articulated by the United States and the European Union is to distinguish the Tamil people fr-om the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) when it comes to resolving Sri Lanka''s conflict. International statements recognising the ''genuine grievances'' of the Tamils often accompany harsh denouncements of the LTTE''s use of armed violence. This separation has been prominent in EU comments accompanying its proscription of the LTTE and in recent comments by US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Richard Boucher.

The message from these key members of the international community to the Tamils is they should reconsider who should front their efforts to seek redress for their grievances. To help them decide, the international community has systematically criminalized the LTTE. This is even though it is only because of the Tigers that a peace process in which these grievances can be taken up has been precipitated (there have, after all, been three decades of Tamil pleading before the war started in 1983).

Contradiction

The international community''s position that the Tamils and the LTTE are different entities with separate interests, however, appea-rs fragile under close scrutiny. Not only is there a case that the LTTE is pursuing Tamil interests, the international community, particularly when imposing or encouraging sanctions on the Tamils, seem to accept, in fact, that it does.

To begin with, in any democratic forum the Tamils have consistently backed policies that are synonymous with LTTE policy. The most recent example is the overwhelming victory of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in the parliamentary polls of 2001 and 2004. The coalition of Tamil parties had run on an election manifesto nominated the LTTE as the sole representatives of the Tamil speaking people.

Other demands included the creation of the LTTE''s Interim Self-Governing Administration (ISGA). In 1977, prior to the ascendancy of the LTTE, the Tamils voted for the notion of an independent state, backing the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) to pursue it. The demands of the Tamils have not deviated over the past three decades, despite the ravages of war. If anything, they''ve become more resolved.

The assertion by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), an internationally funded Colombo based think-tank, citing evidence that over 90% of Tamils in the Northeast support the LTTE and at least 50% of Muslims in the Northeast would live under an LTTE administration should give the doubters pause for thought.

Funding

Aside from their political support within any available democratic space, the Tamil people have also backed the organisation financially. The refugees of the 1983 pogrom have succeeded in rebuilding their lives across the globe. Ironically the Sri Lankan state''s violent methods of suppressing Tamil protests directly resulted in a global Diaspora with adequate financial muscle back a robust challenge the dominance of the Sri Lankan state.

Some international voices, most notably Human Rights Watch (HRW), have explained away the financial backing the LTTE enjoys from its Diaspora as a function of coercion - a theory that the Sri Lankan state also attempts to perpetuate, whilst simultaneously grumbling that not enough is being done by host countries to curb Tamil Diaspora support for the Tigers. The backlash from the Tamil community to the HRW report resulted in a retreat by the organisation to the position that they recognised that a large number of Tamils give support willingly, and that ''some'' do so against their will. The recent angry demonstrations by thousands of Tamils in Europe and Canada against the proscriptions of the LTTE is another challenge to the claim.

Questioning support

The extent of Tamil support for the LTTE have been debated since the inception of the organisation. It has suited the Sri Lankan state to propagate the idea that while it is a vibrant multi-ethnic democracy, the LTTE are a terrorist organisation which does not have the support of the Tamil people and, ther-efore, successfully destroying it will resolve the problems plaguing the island. Sections of the international community echo this claim.

However, the actual conduct of the Sri Lankan state and that of the international community are clearly not formulated on this basis. Quite the reverse. The Tamils and the LTTE are treated as one and the same in a number of unstated, but visible ways. The most glaring sign of this contradiction are the draconian methods used by the Sri Lankan armed forces to terrorise Tamil civilians in the Northeast during times of war to deny the LTTE their support. More recently, the racial riots against Tamils in Trincomalee and the Air Force bombardment of civilian areas in Muttur carried out in retaliation for attacks on security forces by the LTTE are also based on the logic of collective punishment.

One and the same

Even in its own actions and de-spite its rhetoric, the international community also treats the LTTE and the Tamil people as one and the same. The decision to conditi-onally tie rehabilitation and reconstruction aid for the North-east to progress in the peace talks betw-een the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government is a clear example of this. In short, the Tamils get relief if the Tigers make concessions.

The international community appears to sanction Sri Lanka''s collective punishment - backing Colombo during the ''war for pea-ce'' and by consistently commending Colombo for its ''restraint'' in the face of LTTE provocations. The international community supported President Chandrika Kum-aratunga''s draconian embargo on food and medical aid during the last round of fighting. It agreed with President Kumaratunga''s logic that essentials could be blocked from hundreds of thousands of people ''lest it get into the hands of the LTTE fighters'' - who numbered just thousands.

More recently, President Mahinda Rajapakse, then Premier, argued in favour of blocking international tsunami-relief aid from the Northeast for the same reason. Later, after the joint mechanism for tsunami relief was signed by the LTTE and the Sri Lankan state, the international community stood by as the deal was smashed in the courts.

Inconsistency

International aid, however, flowed to Sri Lanka anyway. Just not to the Tamils. To intervene and save the deal would be to undermine the constitution of a democratic state, the argument went. That the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) and the entire peace process itself are contraventions of the Sri Lankan constitution do not seem to matter however.

Were the Tamils to follow the advice of the international community and indeed seek alternative means of redress for their ''legitimate grievances'' other than backing the LTTE, there appear to be few viable avenues. Democrati-cally elected Tamil politicians who effectively promote the demands of the Tamils have been assassinated by the state''s armed forces or associated paramilitary organisations. Journalists and civil society activists sympathetic to the Tamil case have also been targeted by the Sri Lankan military. All this with international impunity.

At odds

The failure by the international community to take tangible measures to deter the Sri Lankan state from crushing Tamils'' efforts to peacefully seek a solution to the ethnic question is at odds with the oft stated position that the international community is sympathetic to Tamil grievances but objects only to the LTTE''s violence.

The international political space for Tamils to argue their case for an autonomous state to resolve their problems is also being systematically closed. The draconian anti-terrorism legislation which been implemented in many Western democracies and the proscription of the LTTE in most of these jurisdictions has made promoting greater Tamil autonomy, and certainly any identification with the objectives of the LTTE, an unlawful act.

Disconcerting

And whilst domestic and international avenues for articulating Tamil demands and sentiments are obstructed there is no suggestion from the international community as to how precisely the Tamils are meant to peacefully pursue their demands.

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the counsel being offered to the Tamil people by the international community is the repeated reference to abstract ''legitimate grievances.'' There is no sense, however, that the international community actually understands what the Tamils themselves want. When pushed for a response, some international officials suggest the Tamils simply need more jobs and greater equality in Sri Lanka''s polity.

Such opinions display a shocking lack of understanding as to what drives Tamil support for the LTTE. Tamil grievances existed long before the LTTE. It is correct that these initially stemmed from obstacles to higher education and economic opportunities. However, the Tamil community largely overcame these obstructions and carried on whilst agitating for their removals.

Trigger

However, widespread support for armed struggle resulted directly as a reaction to state sponsored violence against the Tamils. It is no coincidence that a smouldering Tamil militancy exploded in the wake of the infamous July 1983 pogrom.

During the conflict, the state implemented brutal ethnic cleansing programmes that sought to change the demographics of the Northeast, destroyed Tamil cultural treasures (for example the Jaffna library, numerous temples and churches), imposed the embargo and routinely used indiscriminate bombing and shelling. (It is these factors which have served to united the full spectrum of Tamils, from academics to unemployed youths, behind the concept of an independent state.)

Therefore, addressing Tamil grievances primarily means addressing their security concerns. And it is at this point that the interests of the Tamil people and those of the international community abruptly diverge.

Weak constitution

To begin with, solutions such as rewriting Sri Lanka''s constitution are not credible forms of security for the Tamils. The original British-supplied constitution offered some protections to minorities. But these were overturned with hardly any effort by the Sinhala polity. The present constitution was introduced without the approval of the Tamils. And, in any case, Sri Lankan leaders regularly violate the constitution for their personal ends with impunity. What protection can a constitution be, especially against majoritarian communalism, under these circumstances?

This, not some romantic longing, is the Tamil drive for independent statehood.

Power

Moreover, there appears to be a direct correlation between international ''recognition'' of the need to address ''Tamil grievances'' and military strength of Tamil militancy. Throughout the conflict, the international community has offered substantial financial and military backing to every administration in Colombo with little regard for its invariably inhumane approach to the Tamil problem. It is Colombo''s military inadequacy which has led to this sudden recognition of Tamil ''grievances'' and, therefore, a peace process.

The addressing of Tamil security concerns is the point at which all pragmatic and progressive political discussions on resolving the conflict cease and the international community''s focus on coercively subduing Tamil ambitions commence. The irony of demands by the EU and the US that the LTTE ''be prepared to decommission'' and ''renounce terrorism'' respectively coming amid the widespread killings of civilians by state forces seems lost.

One constant

The one constant of the Sri Lankan conflict has been the unwavering support offered to the Sri Lankan state regardless of which party or individual is in power. From President JR Jayawerdene who unleashed the 1983 pogrom to President Mahi-nda Rajapakse, whose government has demonstrated it will use vicious violence to subdue the rebellious Tamils, the international community has sanctioned and colluded with Sinhala leaders whose actions, by the very liberal standards preached to the LTTE, morally reprehensible.

As an aside, while it is the Tigers'' past violence (terrorism) which is apparently a bar to their legitimacy, at the same time few international diplomats dare criticise the Janatha Vimukthi Peram-una (JVP), despite its proud annual celebrations of its bloody past. A disturbing but not inconceivable thought is that even the JVP would enjoy international support should it come to power in Sri Lanka, irrespective of its policies.

Throughout the conflict numerous determined international efforts have been made to curb Tamil ambitions for freedom; from the restriction of political space abroad for the LTTE and the articulation of Tamil demands to the provision of substantial weaponry to the Sri Lankan state and, of course, vast financial support. These efforts have frequently included attempting to split the Tamil militancy from its support base. Methods have ranged from the targeted disbursement of aid to areas only government controlled areas (to draw Tamils away from the LTTE areas), to proscribing the LTTE as a terrorist organisation (and frightening the Tamil Diaspora into not funding it).

Nothing doing

By contrast, the international community has done nothing to force the Sri Lankan state to seriously address Tamil ''grievances.'' None of the pressures (including a range of sanctions easily deployed against a weak state like Sri Lanka) deployed against other errant states have been used. Economic sanctions or restrictions on the purchase of military equipment or even limited isolation have not even been threatened. Instead, some of Sri Lanka''s most vicious military commanders have been accepted as ambassadors to Western countries.

International policy makers appear to believe that defeating the LTTE, and with it any hopes of addressing Tamil security concerns, should be their primary objective in the region. Perhaps these are based upon some abstract analysis of the strategic value of the island and the greater good it serves despite the repercussions for this abused minority. The circumstances of the Tamils is one of the most glaring examples of the moral bankruptcy of the contemporary international system. Having embarked upon this path of siding with the morally reprehensible, the international community has betrayed the values they claim to uphold.

We cannot expect this situation to change. The only hope for the Tamils is that the strategic balance underpinning the peace process is restored or even titled in their favour. Only this will compel a rethink in the capitals of the states backing the peace process and make resolving ''Tamil grievances'' integral to their own

When the Norwegian sponsored peace process began more than four years ago, there were many in the Tamil community who asked why the LTTE was stopping its armed struggle when it seemed to be in a position of strength, having only just recaptured huge swathes of territory and inflicted heavy losses on the Sri Lankan military.

It became clear, particularly as the peace process unfolded, that the LTTE was seeking to gain a measure of legitimacy in the eyes of the international community (the LTTE maintains that it has already established its legitimacy amongst the Tamils, who continue to provide recruits and support, by fighting the Sri Lankan state to a standstill and precipitating the conditions in which Colombo and, for that matter, the international community, had to engage seriously with their political demands).

Beginning

In 2002, therefore, the LTTE expected its participation in the internationally monitored ceasefire and associated Norwegian peace process to enable the international community to engage with itself and the Tamils and to ascertain for themselves the extent of the support the organization enjoyed on the ground. Secondly, and consequently, it expected the international community to help establish a peaceful transition to Tamil-self rule (whatever form that would ultimately take).

The LTTE attempted through numerous means to establish this legitimacy in the eyes of the international community. It used the ballot box, the backing the Tamil National Alliance, which, having on the basis of ''LTTE as sole representatives of the Tamils'' swept the polls in the Northeast. The LTTE''s support organisations staged a series of massive public rallies drawing hundreds of thousands of people across the Northeast and the Diaspora.

To no avail

The LTTE also attempted to establish a temporary governance mechanism (the Interim Self Governing Authority) incorporating many of the values demanded of the international community and when that was thwarted, a multi-ethnic power-sharing mechanism of limited scope and duration to meet the desperate needs of the people in its controlled areas (the Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure).

All to no avail. Perhaps convinced the LTTE''s participation in the peace process stemmed from military weakness, the international community refused to acknowledge the LTTE''s numerous attempts at legitimising itself. But the international community did more than ignore the LTTE''s effor-ts. In some cases, it worked actively to undermine and thwart them.

Pullback

No sooner had the P-TOMS been signed, the United States announced it not would not contribute any funds through the agreed mechanism. Whilst unwilling to fund the joint mechanism even though, as US embassy spokesman Philip Frayne said, "[it] holds the prospect for efficient and equitable reconstruction assistance to those affected by the tsunami," the United States insisted on continuing to fund the Sri Lankan state. This was even though the state had been criticised by donors for its inequitable distribution of aid in the wake of the tsunami.

Another example of the inherent anti-LTTE, pro-state bias of the international community is its unabashed lack of commitment to the conditions attacked to the aid pledged in Tokyo three years ago this month. The 2003 Tokyo Declaration states: "assistance by the donor community must be closely linked to substantial and parallel progress in the peace process towards fulfilment of the objectives agreed upon by the parties in Oslo".

Weak link

The donors made much of the US$ 4.8b pledge, asserting that a carrot was being dangled for both sides to get them to stay the course to peace. The reality is that, whilst the conditionality on the LTTE (and thus its controlled areas) remained, around 75% of the aid (over US$ 3.5b) was released anyway to the government (a quarter apparently went to the ''Northeast'' - in other words, to government controlled areas there).

In effect, the international community continues to fund the Sri Lankan state despite the lack of progress in the peace process and this has continued even when the state is deliberately steering the island back to war.

At the start of the Norwegian initiative in 2002, the international community asserted that ''a hurting stalemate'' - i.e. a balance of forces - had precipitated the peace process. This month the Sri Lankan government agreed to purchase $250 million worth of arms from Pakistan. But this, according to the logic of the international community, is acceptable because the state is fighting against the Liberation Tigers and therefore needs to be armed. The LTTE, however, has been criticised for shipping in arms, even though these could not amount to more than a fraction of the state''s purchases - and that was before this month''s orders to Pakistan.

The problem

In the eyes of the international community, any cycle of action and reaction always starts with the Tigers making the first negative move. The LTTE, not the state, is to blame for the war in the first place, the failure of the peace process and, ultimately, the present state of affairs.

Throughout the peace process, any request by the LTTE (regardless of how reasonable it was or not) was always viewed through the lens of "what do the Tigers ga-in from this?" For example, when the LTTE called for the disbanding of the high security zones in the Tamil areas, the response of the Sri Lankan government - echoed by the international community - was that the LTTE was looking to move into those areas itself. There was no consideration of the 800,000 Tamil internally displaced people and refugees who still live in camps, unable to return to their homes inside the sprawling network of military bases.

Double standards

Similarly, the demand that Army-backed paramilitaries be disarmed - a call echoed from the outset by many Tamils, including the editorial column of this newspaper - was seen purely as an LTTE objective of weakening its opponents. But Sri Lanka has been brought to the brink of war precisely because the paramilitaries, secure the international community shared this view, were able to continue the Army''s shadow war against the Tigers.

While the Tigers have been criticised, sometimes rightly, for their failure to live up to the very high expectations of a legitimate government, the same international community which has judged the LTTE wanting has refused to hold the Sri Lankan state to the sa-me standard. On the contrary, the Sri Lankan government has been praised for its military''s ''restraint'' at the same time that civilians were fleeing government-controlled territory (for LTTE areas or to India) and atrocities were being reported every day.

Mechanics

That Sri Lanka holds elections is enough to deem it a democracy in international eyes. It matters not that Sri Lanka is also a country where those targeting and killing Tamil civilians not only continue to enjoy impunity, but often rise in establishment ranks. To quote Am-nesty International, "there is a disturbing pattern of incomplete or ineffective investigations by the government, with the result that perpetrators of such violence generally operate with impunity." But the international community''s consideration for Tamils'' rights has been amply demonstrated by the lack of a single government willing to condemn the attacks on civilians by Sri Lankan military personnel.

Consider, the massacre of 13 civilians in the islets off the coast of Jaffna, of which Amnesty said it has received: "credible reports that Sri Lanka Navy personnel and armed cadres affiliated with the Eelam People''s Democratic Party, a Tamil political party that is opposed to the LTTE, were present at the scene of the killings." But just two weeks after these killings, the US Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, Richard Boucher, was praising the government, saying: "I told the President that we welcome the restraint that the government has shown in the face of many provocations by the Tamil Tigers."

Hypocrisy

In the face of international community''s hypocrisy - high standards for the non-state actor and seemingly non-existent standards for the state- what, if anything, does the LTTE gain by continuing to attempt to satisfy the demands of the international community? Indeed, it can be argued that rather than gaining, the LTTE - and, therefore, the Tamils - currently stand to lose more if they continue to blindly pursue an ever-denied international legitimacy.

For example, if the Tigers fall in line with international - especially US - demands and disarm while Tamils are clearly without security, the LTTE will lose its legitimacy in the eyes of the Tamils (not to mention be wiped out by the security forces). From the Tamil perspective, when physical security is at stake, of what use is an organisation that cannot protect them?

While recognising the LTTE to the extent that it has been included as a party at the negotiating table, the international community has worked hard during that process to weaken the organisation''s claim to legitimacy. This has been through repeated calls for additional (i.e. opposing) actors at the negotiating table, strengthening other organisations whose sole raison d''etre is their opposition to the Tigers, repeatedly condemning actions of the LTTE while keeping silent on the actions of the Sri Lankan government, and so on.

Unheard

It has also become clear the international community will not recognise the legitimate calls of the Tamil Tigers on behalf of the Tamil people. Instead the LTTE will perversely be blamed for their continued hardships.

And legitimacy in the eyes of the international community might not be possible for the LTTE anyway - if the EU statement at the time of proscribing the Tiger is any indication, legitimacy seems to be awarded only to those who in fact oppose the Tigers.

Little wonder then that after more than four years of engaging with the international community and attempting to demonstrate to the world their earned right to represent the Tamil people, the Tigers have now begun the process of reconsidering the efficacy of this approach.

Fundamentals

The Tamils have to consider the fundamentals of the present situation, to look at the cards they hold, as opposed to the cards they should have been dealt. Sri Lanka''s conflict went from a ''civil war'' somewhere in South Asia to an issue that necessitated Japan, US and EU as ''Co-chairs'' because of a dramatic change in the ground situation within Sri Lanka.

As has often been argued, the actions of the international community have, if anything, hastened the slide towards another war. Now war is advocated not only by the nationalists of the south, but also by many Tamils who see power as the only currency that might bring the international community around to viewing their grievances as being genuine.

And given that one interpretation of recent actions and statement by the European Union and the United States is that the LTTE have only been demonised to the extent they have because they are a non-state actor, if ever there was an argument for pursuing statehood, the international community has, over the past few weeks, convincingly made it.

Sri Lanka’s military last week stepped up deep-penetration raids into Tamil-Tiger controlled territory, killing several civilians and a senior LTTE officer. The attacks come amid continuing daily violence in government-controlled parts of the Northeast.

On one hand there are daily gun and grenade attacks on Sri Lankan security forces and on the other, Sri Lankan security forces have fired at and shelled LTTE positions. Meanwhile Army-backed paramilitaries and troops continued what international monitors have described as a ‘campaign of targeted killings.’

Last week the Sri Lanka Army stepped up deep penetration raids into LTTE-controlled Vanni, launching them out of government controlled areas to the south of the Vanni region. There were also raids into LTTE controlled regions of the Batticaloa district from the government controlled ones.

Sri Lankan commandos conducted both targeted killings of LTTE members and employees of LTTE administration services, but also conducted random attacks on civilians traveling in bullock carts and bicycles.

The Sri Lankan troops are drawn from the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) unit also known as Deep Penetration Unit (DPU).

Lieutenant Colonel Mahenthi, an LTTE Commander in the Mannar district, was killed along with three LTTE cadres in a claymore attack carried out by SLA soldiers on Saturday.

On Monday, pilgrims going to the Vatrapalai temple festival narrowly escaped a claymore mine blast on the Nedunkerny-Mulliavalai road.

Four health officials of the Tamil Eelam Health Service Mobile Medical Service were wounded when LRRP commandos triggered a claymore on Thursday at Akkarayan, 20 km from Kilinochchi.

On Tuesday this week, members of a Tamil auxiliary brigade surprised LRRP commandos planting mines on the Nedunkerni road between Nainamadu and Puliyankulam. One LRRP soldier and two auxiliary fighters were killed in the ensuing firefight.

The LRRP team withdrew, leaving behind the body of their dead comrade. The LTTE recovered the equipment packs, communication sets after the battle.

The escalation of violence comes amid heightened fears of renewed conflict. About 500 people have been killed since early April, raising fears that a 2002 cease-fire between the LTTE and the government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) might collapse.

Amid the violence, the European Union’s decision to proscribe the LTTE as a terrorist group has outraged the Tigers who have demanded that EU countries remove their nationals from the Nordic group of monitors overseesing the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA).

Last week an LTTE delegation met with the heads of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) and Norwegian facilitators to state the demand and to discuss the ongoing violence and the dispute over the sea movements by the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) and the Sea Tigers.

LTTE officials said the SLMM had agreed to desist from traveling on SLN vessels after the LTTE insisted they must either travel on both sides’ craft or neither’s. In recent months, SLMM monitors on SLN vessels have had narrow escapes when clashes erupted between the two sides.

The government has recently also clashed with the monitoring mission after truce monitors said troops appeared to be involved in extrajudicial killings and the government appeared to be supporting anti-Tiger Tamil armed groups despite denials.

Reuters this week quoted analysts say that without talks, it may be almost impossible to stop an escalation in violence and a return to civil war.

Security has been stepped up in Colombo to levels before the Frbaury 2002 truce with increased numbers of road blocks and check points.

Last week the LTTE delegation in Oslo refused to meet a Sri Lankan delegation invited simultaneously by the Norwegian facilitators as Colombo had dispatched a low-level delegation.

The LTTE said it was prepared to allow the head of its Peace Secretariat, S. Puleedevan meet his Sri Lankan counterpart, Palitha Kohana, who was heading the GoSL delegation, but the latter refused.

Before leaving Oslo, the LTTE issued a statement saying the Tigers would continue to press their goal of self-determination for the Tamils.

Meanwhile, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has appointed a think tank to assist him in formulating a draft framework towards a final solution to the long drawn-out armed conflict.

It is headed by the ultra-Sinhala nationalist constitutional lawyer H. L. De Silva who at talks held in Geneva in February spearheaded GoSL’s efforts to have the CFA declared unconstitutional and void.

Dismissing the Sri Lankan military’s justification for its latest major offensive against the LTTE in Sampur as “spurious” and “deceptive,” the Tigers’ political representative in the area said the LTTE first fired on the naval base in Trincomalee when resisting the SLA’s initial offensive in late July.

Sri Lanka’s military has justified a major offensive launched Monday against the LTTE in Sampur as necessary to safeguard the Trincomalee naval base from LTTE artillery based in the enclave.

However, the LTTE’s Trincomalee district head, Mr. S. Elilan, said Friday that the LTTE first fired on the base to fend off a major ground offensive launched in July by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) against the LTTE in the Maavil Aru area.

“Since April this year the Sri Lanka military has conducted several bouts of sustained air and artillery bombardment against our controlled areas in Trincomalee,” Mr. Elilan told reporters Sunday.

“In April, several villages in LTTE-controlled areas were flattened by artillery and multi-barrel rocket launchers. Fifteen civilians were killed. Yet [even then] we did not fire on the Trincomalee naval base,” he said.

“Since then the Sri Lanka Air Force has repeatedly bombed our areas and the Sri Lanka Army has repeatedly shelled and rocketed our areas. Yet we did not fire on the base,” he said.

“It was only when Sri Lanka’s military launched a deliberate offensive in the Maavil Aru region with the intention of invading and occupying LTTE-controlled territory that we were compelled to fire on the base as part of a wider defensive counter-offensive,” he said.

“In particular, it was the deliberate targeting and destruction of civilian settlements in our controlled areas which killed and wounded many people and displaced tens of thousands that necessitated a major defensive operation,” Mr. Elilan said.

“But as part of our counter-attack, we were careful to minimise civilian casualties – LTTE artillery was precisely directed at selected military targets in the Trincomalee base,” he said.

“Sri Lanka’s military is continuing to wage a campaign of deliberate displacement against the Tamils,” Mr. Elilan charged.

40,000 Tamil civilians from Trincomalee have fled their homes and sought safety in southern Tricnomalee/northern Batticaloa, and now the Sri Lankan military was blocking international and local aid agencies from accessing the displaced to help, he said.

The World Food Program (WFP) has material for only half the displaced people and that, moreover, for a very short time, he said.

Mr. Elilan said he had met with the officials of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, who have ascertained the extent of the humanitarian crisis in the Vergual/Vaharai area.

Although the vast numbers of displaced are known to the international agencies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Sri Lankan government is justifying the blocking of aid on the basis it is not needed.

The Government Agent (GA) for Trincomalee, a retired Sri Lanka Army Major General, is refusing to approve aid supplies also, Mr. Elilan told reporters.

The GA is justifies the blocking of aid to where the displaced have taken shelter by simply claiming everybody in that area has fled and no one is left to feed.

The Sri Lanka Army (SLA) is deliberately razing Tamil villages to the ground as part of its military offensive against the LTTE in Muthur East region of Trincomalee, LTTE officials said last week.

Through Norwegian facilitators, the LTTE has condemned in the “strongest possible terms Sri Lanka’s ‘scorched earth’ policy of occupying Tamil civilian centers and rendering them uninhabitable,” the LTTE’s military spokesman, I. Ilanthirayan, said Friday.

A scorched earth policy is a military tactic which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area.

The SLA offensive, launched Monday was being directed through civilian settlements of the region, he said last Friday.

Sri Lanka’s army says it is targeting LTTE camps and artillery bases, justifying its offensive as necessary to safeguard the Trincomalee navy base.

More than 1,200 Tamil families have been evacuated to safety in the past week, Mr. Ianthirayan said mid-last week.

The SLA has occupied and destroyed the Tamil villages of Kaddaiparichchan, Senaiyoor, Kaneshapuram and Ambalnagar, Mr. Ilanthirayan said.

The villages were bombarded with heavy artillery and multi-barrel rocket launchers before ground troops occupied them, LTTE officials in Sampur said.

Subsequently cultivated fields and livestock were destroyed, they added.

As thousands more Tamil civilians join the two hundred thousand people displaced this year in Sri Lanka military air and artillery bombardments and ground offensives, the Sri Lankan government is deliberately compounding the displaced people’s difficulties, they said.

“Sri Lanka’s renewed military aggression has aggravated the deep humanitarian crisis [in the region],” Mr. Ianthirayan said. “The Sri Lankan military is maintaining a blockade on international and local NGOs providing emergency supplies for the displaced.”

Sri Lanka Army (SLA) troops have advanced into Sampoor village in the LTTE-controlled part of the eastern Trincomalee district and are consolidating their positions, the government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) said Monday.

LTTE political officials slammed the invasion as a severe breach of the February 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) said further fighting was ongoing in the Sampoor region.

“This is a severe breach of the ceasefire agreement with the Sri Lankan military taking LTTE-controlled areas,” S. Puleedevan, head of the LTTE peace secretariat, told Reuters.

“They (GoSL) are not honoring the ceasefire agreement. They are forcing it to the brink of collapse,” he added.

“On our side we are fully committed to it,” Mr. Puleedevan said.

“Our troops have captured Sampoor,” a jubilant President Mahinda Rajapakse said to thunderous applause at a rally to mark the 55th anniversary of the founding of his Sri Lanka Freedom Party, AFP reported.

President Rajapakse defended the latest military offensive and praised Sri Lanka Army (SLA) chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka.

President Rajapakse’s announcement comes a week after the military launched a major ground, air and sea offensive towards LTTE-held Sampoor, sparking heavy fighting.

Reuters quoted analysts as saying the Tigers appeared to have pulled out of Sampoor, a tiny settlement containing a handful of rough houses and shops, a Sea Tiger memorial and an LTTE political office.

“It looks as though the LTTE pulled out without any direct confrontation because of the artillery fire from the armed forces,” Sri Lankan military analyst Iqbal Athas told Reuters Monday.

Most of the civilian population had already fled south, amid heavy Sri Lankan air and artillery bombardments.

The government said Sunday 14 soldiers had been killed and 92 wounded since the Sampoor offensive began a week earlier and estimates around 120 Tigers were killed there by the weekend.

But on the first day off the offensive alone, AFP reporting from Trincomalee said 11 soldiers had been killed and 79 wounded, mainly by LTTE artillery and mortars.

And the Tigers said they early last week they had lost 12 fighters defending Sampoor and had killed around 50 SLA soldiers.

Tamil television footage Friday showed LTTE cadres moving around burning SLA APCs after one battle which left 10 soldiers dead.

The Tigers in the Sampoor region were continuing to put up resistance that had slowed the SLA advance, LTTE officials said Monday.

It has taken over a week for the thousands of Sri Lankan troops to move the 3.5 kms from its Kaddaiparichchan base to Sampoor village, they said.

Last Monday, troops from Pachchanoor and Pallimunai SLA camps attempted to advance into Sampoor via Thoppur and Kilathimunai, Trincomalee

The initial two-pronged offensive was later changed amid stiff LTTE resistance, with one line of advance, through Thoppur, being abandoned, Tamil press reports said.

SLA troops were instead diverted to the advance through Kaddaiparichchan, a move which allowed LTTE forces in the Sampoor area to conduct an orderly withdrawal past Thoppur.

The Sri Lanka military had virtually suspended the ground advance through Kaddaiparichchan at the weekend, following intense LTTE resistance there, AFP reported.

SLA troops advanced when the Tigers moved out of Sampoor to avoid heavy Sri Lankan bombardment, analysts said.

“The only resistance we encountered was mines and booby-trapped devices.” Government spokesman Minister Keheliya Rambukwella told AFP.

“We captured the main Sampoor artillery position of the Tigers. We suspect they dismantled the guns or pulled them back. We are now in Sampoor,” he said.

The government had justified its offensive against LTTE-held Sampoor on the basis LTTE artillery there was threatening the Navy base at Trincomalee harbour, 10km across the Koddiya Bay.

“This is not war, we are only responding to an attack on us,” President Rajapakse told the SLFP rally.

However the LTTE says it was compelled to fire on the base to defend against a major Sri Lankan offensive launched July 21 against its positions in Maavil Aru, Trincomalee on the pretext of opening a disputed water channel.

Speaking to TamilNet Monday, Head of the LTTE Political Wing in Sampoor, Mr. S. Elilan, said that Sri Lanka government’s “undeclared aggression” began in April.

From the outset, the Sri Lankan strategy has centred around the targetting of civilian centres and the creation of a humanitarian crisis, he said. “Since April 97 civilians have been killed, 215 wounded and 46,000 displaced.”

Aid workers say the government is hampering access to Tiger-held territory, and obstructing their operations by insisting staff obtain special work permits to go to the north and east, Reuters reported Monday.

“I think the idea is try and stop aid reaching LTTE areas,” an aid worker told Reuters on condition of anonymity.