Is a ban on LTTE Lanka’s next step?

NEW DELHI: Sri Lanka’s decision to call off the February 2002 ceasefire with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is at one level a logical move as the truce was only on paper.

In the last two years and more both sides have used air power and artillery in what is virtually a full-fledged war between the two sides.

Yet Wednesday’s move signals the growing confidence of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the defence establishment in Colombo that the military has gained the upper hand. The next step could be a ban on the LTTE.

The President’s brother defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had already given a hint in an interview to the government-controlled Daily News last week.

He said the government should officially withdraw from the ceasefire and ban the LTTE for a fresh approach to the Tamil question. The ceasefire agreement brokered by Norway had become a joke in the eyes of the people, he added.

While calling off the ceasefire agreement is just a formality, banning the LTTE would set alarm bells ringing across the world.

This would indicate that Rajapaksa has slammed the door on negotiations with the Tigers. Even hardline governments had refrained from taking this extreme step.

Colombo had not banned the LTTE so far - unlike India, the US and several other nations - on the grounds that it would be difficult to hold negotiations with a proscribed outfit.

So clearly the government is now in no mood to talk to the Tigers before crushing them militarily. President Rajapaksa had publicly said so recently.

India has so far refused to comment on the latest move but a ban on the Tigers without an accompanying political package for the Tamil minorities would not be welcome.

While India has no love for the LTTE, New Delhi realises that without the Tigers the Sinhala Buddhist establishment would be unwilling to give the Tamils their due.  The Americans as well as the EU would push the President, as will New Delhi, not to take the next step.

President Rajapaksa can be expected to take some time before following his brother’s advice. The mood in Colombo is triumphant, the defence services believe the LTTE has been considerably weakened. The eastern province has been freed by and large from the LTTE stranglehold.

Much of this thanks to ‘Colonel’ Karuna, who broke away from the Tigers. Once Karuna served his purpose he was flown out to London, where he is facing charges for travelling on false papers.

Now that much of the eastern province has been cleared the government forces are concentrating on Vanni and Mullaitivu, LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabakaran’s headquarters. There are even reports that Prabakaran was injured, even killed, in an air raid.

But the Tigers who were the first to introduce suicide bombers to the world can easily bounce back. On the day Colombo announced its decision to call off the ceasefire, the LTTE detonated a claymore mine in the heart of the capital killing four people and injuring 20. Lanka on alert, DNA World, P15