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WEB-ONLY EXCLUSIVE
'Tamils in Sri Lanka Want Peace, Not War'
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar discusses the LTTE's "sham" cease-fire offer
By MEENAKSHI GANGULY

January 4, 2001
Web posted at 12:45 p.m. Hong Kong time, 11:45 p.m. EDT

More than 60,000 people have died in the Tamil Tigers' 20-year quest for an independent state in Sri Lanka. The country's foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, a Tamil himself, says peace efforts are continuing, but no one can trust the Tigers. In an exclusive interview with TIME New Delhi correspondent Meenakshi Ganguly while on holiday in India, Kadirgamar discusses the Norway's mediation efforts, the LTTE's sham cease-fire offer, and his country's craving for peace. Edited excerpts:

TIME: What is your reaction to the LTTE offer of a cease-fire?
Kadirgamar: The LTTE should have first discussed the cease-fire with the Norwegian government's representatives who would then have consulted us. Instead, the LTTE chose to announce a unilateral cease-fire. This seems to have been a publicity stunt aimed to win credit from an international audience. Their announcement is a transparent ploy to impede the government's forces in their task of clearing the Jaffna Peninsula of the LTTE presence and bringing normalcy in the lives of the civilian population. The LTTE always chooses a moment most opportune to them to announce a cease-fire. They never do so when their military campaigns are on the move. For instance, they did not suggest a cease-fire when they occupied new areas of land in the Vanni area, overran the Elephant Pass camp and rolled into the Jaffna Peninsula itself in the months preceding May 1999. In fact, up to about Sept. 2000, they had made it clear to the Norwegians that they were not willing to discuss the question of negotiations at all. On the contrary, they made it clear that their main objective was to retake the Jaffna Peninsula. Now that Velupillai Prabhakaran [the Tamil rebel leader] probably realizes that his dream of retaking Jaffna is unrealizable, and that military operations to clear the Peninsula are proceeding, he suddenly decides to announce a cease-fire. This was timed for the Christmas period and the Hindu festival of Thai Pongal in order to win sympathy and credibility.

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TIME: But Prabhakaran calls it a goodwill gesture.
Kadirgamar: Let us be frank, even blunt, about gestures of goodwill. Where in truth goodwill exists, gestures are unnecessary. Where goodwill does not exist, a so-called gesture of goodwill is a mere sham, a posture. Since April 1995 when it went back to war while negotiations with the Government were still on, the LTTE has shown no goodwill at all. Where was goodwill when the LTTE bombed the Central Bank, massacred a number of young Buddhist monks and other innocent civilians, bombed the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, and assassinated a number of democratic Tamil-speaking politicians, and attempted to assassinate President Chandrika Kumaratunga? How did the LTTE suddenly discover sufficient goodwill for the Sri Lankan government to warrant the making of a gesture -- and one that is so patently self-serving?

TIME: What is your government's position on the cease-fire?
Kadirgamar: We made it clear on Dec. 12 that the government considered the cease-fire a "consequent step that would arise when negotiations proceed to the mutual satisfaction of both sides." The government has clearly indicated its wish to engage in talks with the LTTE. In fact, the government had agreed with the advice of the Norwegian representatives, that unilateral gestures of goodwill are unwelcome at this time. Thus, in accordance with this understanding, the government does not itself intend to engage in any unilateral gestures.

TIME: Given its history of violating cease-fires, can you trust the LTTE?
Kadirgamar: No. The LTTE's offers of cease-fires have, in the past, been opportunistic. The present offer is probably a maneuver to gain position on the ground. In any event, the LTTE has already violated its own unilateral cease- fire -- it has thrown grenades at soldiers in the past few days.

TIME: What is the role of Norway in the peace process?
Kadirgamar: At the invitation of our government and the LTTE, Norway was engaged as a facilitator in order to bring the parties together for negotiations on the substantive issues. Norway is not a mediator or an arbitrator. It has no mandate to prescribe solutions to the problem. It has undertaken to bring the parties to the table so that they can talk directly to each other. This is the approach favored by our government.

TIME: Did they find Prabhakaran genuinely interested in a resolution?
Kadirgamar: After their meeting with Prabhakaran on Nov. 1, the Norwegians walked away with the impression that he would like to enter into negotiations at some stage. But I must add that the Norwegians were meeting him for the first time. The governments of Sri Lanka and India have known him for a long time. Both governments are familiar with his record.

TIME: After nearly two decades of war, are the Tamils suffering battle fatigue?
Kadirgamar: Definitely. The Tamil people who live in Sri Lanka have been severely buffeted by war for nearly 20 years. They have experienced all its horrors, including death, the destruction of property, and disruption to their lives. They wish for nothing more than an end to the war. They do not want a separate state. They do not want to be ruled by a fascist organization. They wish to be left alone to pick up the pieces of their broken lives. Like all human beings everywhere, they yearn for peace, not for the continuation of a war to achieve a separate state. The Tamil expatriates who live in the affluent countries of the West do not experience the horrors of war. Some of them raise the money that fuels the war. But if they came back to Sri Lanka and lived in the North and East they would surely be in the vanguard of the movement for peace, the movement to end the war.

TIME: Would Prabhakaran respect his peoples' wish for an end to violence?
Kadirgamar: He will have to. He will not be able to go on much longer disregarding the wishes of the Tamil people who live in the North and East. He knows that he does not enjoy popular support among the Tamil-speaking people who live in Sri Lanka. If he did, the Tamil people who were driven out of Jaffna by the LTTE at gunpoint when the army was advancing into the Peninsula in 1996 would not have flocked back into the peninsula within days of the army consolidating its positions.

TIME: The LTTE has managed to survive because of its overseas diaspora. Are you asking host countries to curb the activities of the Tamil Tigers?
Kadirgamar: Certainly. We have for many years been pressing countries where the majority of Tamil expatriates live --Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States -- to enact national laws enabling the proscription of terrorist organizations and the prohibition of fund-raising activities for terrorist purposes. Apart from the U.S., which declared the LTTE a terrorist organization three years ago, and the UK, which enacted a new Terrorism Act in July this year, the other countries have not yet enacted laws to counter terrorism. But they are in the process of doing so.

TIME: How is the LTTE funding its war?
Kadirgamar: By the contributions of some sections of the Tamil diaspora, from trafficking in narcotics and human smuggling, and from commercial operations, especially shipping. In Canada and the U.S, in particular, courts have held that fund-raising by LTTE-front organizations is taking place in their countries.

TIME: Have you been able to convince the international community that the Tigers are dealing in drugs and human trafficking?
Kadirgamar: Yes, but more evidence has to be gathered regarding these activities. It is also essential that these countries have adequate laws to tackle the problem of drug dealing and human trafficking. They must keep close track of these operations and collect evidence on the basis of which prosecutions could be launched, and they should have the political will and commitment to mount and sustain a drive for the elimination of such operations.

TIME: If the peace attempts fail, do you think that the Sri Lankan army can win a conventional war against the Tigers?
Kadirgamar: Yes. It will take some time but it would certainly happen. If funds raised by LTTE supporters in the West begin to dwindle -- and the LTTE also finds it increasingly difficult to land arms on the shores of Sri Lanka because of Naval surveillance -- then it will not take too long for us to bring the war to a successful conclusion.

TIME: Is the LTTE still using child combatants?
Kadirgamar: Unfortunately, yes. There is clear evidence of this on the battlefield itself where the armed forces frequently find the bodies of young children, both boys and girls. The UNICEF representative in Colombo has also stated that parents have complained about the abduction of their children by the LTTE. The international community is now well aware of the problem. What is very difficult to understand is how the LTTE can claim to be fighting a war of liberation if they cynically and systematically destroy the young Tamil children who should be the beneficiaries, not the victims, of "liberation."

TIME: The LTTE keeps talking about 'restoration of normalcy' before it enters into negotiations with the government.
Kadirgamar: The Sri Lankan government would like society as a whole to live freely, and for conditions of normalcy to prevail throughout the country. However, it is due to the activities of the LTTE that there is disruption or absence of normalcy in certain parts of the country.

TIME: The LTTE blames the Sri Lankan government for the hardships faced by the Tamil people.
Kadirgamar: Let there be no mistake about this: the difficulties of the Tamil people are the result of the war by the LTTE for which it has received no mandate from the Tamil people themselves. There is sufficient evidence to show that the hardships are caused by the tactics adopted by the LTTE, depriving people of government supplies of food, medicine and other essentials.

TIME: Are you under international pressure to resolve the conflict?
Kadirgamar: The Sri Lankan government wants to resolve the conflict as early as possible. Many friendly countries have urged us to find a political solution to the problem. They have even offered their offices to bring the parties together to find a way to end the war and bring peace to our country. I would not call this international pressure.

TIME: Do you think the world understands your difficulties in trying to negotiate with the LTTE?
Kadirgamar: Yes, I think so. In recent years the world at large has begun to see the LTTE for what it is -- a monolithic, fascist organization claiming to be the national liberation movement of the Tamil people. That is why so much support has been expressed for the territorial integrity, unity and sovereignty of the State of Sri Lanka. I think the world now understands that in trying to negotiate with the LTTE, the Sri Lankan government and its armed forces always have to be alert and be well prepared to defend the state.

TIME: President Kumaratunga had told TIME that she had offered a 10-year term to Prabhakaran to manage the Tamil-majority areas. Does that offer still stand?
Kadirgamar: That offer was made many years ago. The LTTE was not interested in it because it was obsessed by its dream of a separate state. What the president has been striving to achieve over the past six years, is a comprehensive settlement of the problem on the basis of substantial devolution of power to the regions of Sri Lanka as envisaged in the draft Constitution which she presented to Parliament last August. In the absence of a two-thirds majority the Government was unable to secure its passage. But President Kumaratunga has stated that she intends to try again to achieve the enactment of the new Constitution, which will guarantee substantial rights in a variety of areas to the minority communities.

TIME: Do you think the opposition will agree to enact the Constitution this time?
Kadirgamar: Yes, I do. Now that the heat and dust of the parliamentary election battle has subsided, I hope the many members of parties in the opposition who do favor, indeed desire, a negotiated settlement of our problem will join hands with the government to achieve that result. In a democratic society all M.P.s, whether in government or opposition, know the wishes and feelings of the people. They would not wish needlessly to prolong the agony of our people.

TIME: Do you see an end to this conflict in the near future?
Kadirgamar: Yes, but it is not possible to say when. This depends to a large extent on the attitude of the LTTE. If it wants to keep fighting for a separate state then the Sri Lankan government will have no alternative but to continue the war. But if the LTTE is prepared to discuss seriously and honestly a settlement that guarantees to the Tamil-speaking people and all minorities their just rights, then it would be possible for fruitful negotiations to be held. This could happen within months rather than years.