"We Want a Real Peace"

Pre

sident Chandrika Kumaratunga last week plunged the Sri Lankan peace process into crisis when she began a power struggle with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, suspending parliament, preparing and then declining to impose a state of emergency, and sacking the ministers of defense, interior and media and assuming their portfolios. The 58-year-old leader later complained of the years of "abuse" and "horrendous insults" from Wickremesinghe's party. She denied there was a crisis but also announced that the 20-month-old ceasefire agreement with the Tamil Tigers was "invalid" as she, as head of state, had not signed it. Wickremesinghe's government reacted by postponing peace talks with the Tigers indefinitely. She met TIME's Alex Perry at President's House in Colombo on the night of Nov. 8.

TIME: Are you taking a risk with Sri Lanka's peace process for your own political ambitions?
Kumaratunga: How could I be putting the peace process in doubt?

TIME: The LTTE [Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam] has said that they don't trust you. And this [the sacking of three ministers, suspension of parliament] was quite a surprising move. Haven't you proved their point: that you can upset things in a rather unpredictable manner?
Kumaratunga: I have done nothing about the peace process. The LTTE says different things at different times. They have started saying they can't trust [Sri Lankan Prime Minister] Ranil Wickremesinghe now. They used to say they liked Chandrika very much when I first came and they started discussing with us. So they say different things and one shouldn't take those seriously. But I don't see how taking over defense at a time when the defense minister permitted nine shiploads of armaments to come into the country... Have you actually seen my statement?

TIME: Yes I have.
Kumaratunga: So nine shiploads of armaments were allowed to come into the country from April 2002. I acted with superhuman restraint not taking back defense when I actually gave defense [to the government] as a special favor for the peace process. And nine shiploads of arms were allowed to come in. Surface-to-surface missiles, surface-to-air missiles and all kinds of other things, huge quantities of explosives. Several of these were apprehended by the navy, and the defense minister, when contacted, says "Let me contact the Prime Minister." And this goes on for hours and finally they say, "Let the LTTE go with all the armaments."

Another example: the LTTE has been allowed to recruit thousands of children. Some nine-year-olds, some seven-year-olds. When I handed over the defense ministry, the LTTE had a maximum of 6,000 armed cadres. Today they have over 18,000—the large majority of which are children. So in the name of peace, you cannot allow such horrendous violations of human rights of the Tamil people. These are the very people the LTTE is supposed to be liberating. Somebody, somewhere has to correct this situation.

And then finally I gave the defense ministry away at Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe's insistence, for the sake of peace because he told me it would be difficult to run a peace process with people from different political parties. And Ranil promised that all important issues would be discussed with me. Not a single one was discussed with me. I used to hear about them after they were done from the newspapers. And on top of this, to make it worse, the defense minister tries various ruses to take my presidential powers. I could have just sacked him from all his cabinet posts. But I left him with three major cabinet posts and only removed defense from him because my only objective was to safeguard the sovereignty of the state and the nation and that's all.

TIME: I've spoken to a lot of people in Colombo who've said, "This is simply a power play."
Kumaratunga: It's a complete lie. I would like you to speak to people, not the lot of people that you meet, that's about 0.1% percent or 0.5% of the population. We have been doing surveys in the last three or four days and the vast majority who are known to have voted for the UNP [Wickremesinghe's United National Party] have said that the President has at last done what she should have done many months ago. I'm telling you very honestly, there was a lot of concern, almost fright, among a large, large majority about the way the peace process was being handled, and that the defense of the state was being jeopardized in the name of peace. Everybody wants peace, but they want a real peace, a true peace, a durable peace. And a lot of people are beginning to feel that the way it has been done, peace will become very elusive. Because when you discuss with a hardened, ruthless organization like the LTTE, they have very clear, cleverly worked-out strategies. And I fear the government negotiating team did not. One cannot say, "Peace at any cost" and just go on and on and on in an ad hoc way. I wish TIME Magazine would engage a neutral foreign company to make a survey. I would say 75% of the population would agree that now they feel that there is a balance, that they are safe with the President looking after defense while the Prime Minister is going on with the peace. Because they have jeopardized the security of the country. They have been very irresponsible. This does not mean that I think there were no gains. There were a lot of positive things from the peace process. But the peace process had stopped for seven months.

TIME: Well, the Tigers had just come back with their proposals. That was seen as a positive sign.
Kumaratunga: But it's a proposal asking for a separate state. They are asking that the government of Sri Lanka should not have any authority over the coast and the economic zone, which stretches 200 km, taking in the southern tip of India and almost up to Indonesia and two thirds of the entire coastline around Sri Lanka. If this is not a separate state, I ask you what is? They also have insisted that the LTTE should be treated on par with the government of Sri Lanka. So for an organization to be treated on par with a sovereign government means only one thing, that the organization is considered to be a separate state. So very insidiously the LTTE is clearly stating that they are not willing to give up their call for a separate state, at least for the moment.

TIME: Let's agree that the LTTE is a very ruthless organization; some might say that they even founded the modern era of terror. But when you're injecting this sort of uncertainty into the peace process, it's quite a gamble, isn't it, to rely on an organization that's notorious for its unpredictable ruthlessness? What you're asking them to do is show restraint. You're asking them to be reasonable. Isn't that a bit of a gamble?
Kumaratunga: On what?

TIME: Well, if they see something they don't like, they might strike.
Kumaratunga: But what would the LTTE not like?

TIME: For instance, they have been building contacts with individuals such as the defense minister, who will no longer be there. What I'm asking is, are you playing with fire here, with an organization known to be ruthless, deadly and unpredictable?
Kumaratunga: If they talked to me twice, why can't they talk to me now? But I didn't initiate the crisis. The defense minister initiated the crisis... [by trying to] take over my defense powers. I could have grabbed the ministry just like that. But I did not. I did the extreme, utmost democratic act by very democratically and humbly asking the Supreme Court for their opinion, and it is only then that I acted. I did not initiate the crisis. They did. I didn't even respond to a crisis.

TIME: OK, but the question I was asking essentially was: "Were you not taking a risk with the LTTE's reaction here?"
Kumaratunga: No... they would not react as long as the peace process goes on, as long as I don't say that the peace process is off or something like that. And I have clearly instructed our armed forces to strictly abide by the ceasefire agreement and keep the status quo as far as defense goes.

TIME: Let me ask you about the state of emergency, or your explanation for the reports that there was a state of emergency. I hear now that there is a public security ordinance, deploying the armed forces in all 25 districts [of the country].
Kumaratunga: That has been done for the last three years.

TIME: I was told that this had happened yesterday.
Kumaratunga: Good God. The defense minister has been promulgating it for the last two years. The public security ordinance is required in a country which is still latently at war and that is a sort of lesser level of the emergency regulations in order to authorize armed forces to go into action if and when required.

TIME: Let me ask you about your reaction to the crowds that greeted the Prime Minister on his way into Colombo. What did you make of that?
Kumaratunga: Well this is a common thing in South Asia. We had about 20 times that crowd on Oct. 24 in Colombo. [Kumaratunga held a party rally on the Oct. 24 Hindu holiday of Diwali, a timing that seemed aimed at, and succeeded in, infuriating the Hindu LTTE].

TIME: But did you take the crowds meeting Wickremesinghe as an expression of popular opinion?
Kumaratunga: Well it is popular support because they got 4.2 million votes. And about 10,000 people out of that are supposed to have come and those are their voters.

TIME: It almost had the flavor of a victory parade.
Kumaratunga: Victory over what? Well you can take hundreds of vehicles from government departments and say that these are ours. But the crowds weren't that huge. There were crowds 20 or 30 times more on Oct. 24 when my party held a rally in Colombo. That was also a victory rally. But 20 times the size. This is very common in South Asia. People come onto the road and shout and let off fireworks. It doesn't mean very much. But I suppose it must have been nice for the Prime Minister to be welcomed like that.