DATE=10/09/00
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
NUMBER=5-47128
TITLE=SRI LANKA PEACE PROSPECTS
BYLINE=JIM TEEPLE
DATELINE=COLOMBO
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: Voters in Sri Lanka go to the polls Tuesday to elect a new parliament. More than 50 people have died in election-related violence and observers say they expect the situation to get worse as the voting gets closer. Overshadowing the voting is Sri Lanka's 17-year civil war between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam who are fighting to carve a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority out of the northern and eastern parts of the country. V-O-A's Jim Teeple reports from Colombo, while Tuesday's election is in part being held to decide a future course for ending the long-running war, the fighting will likely continue long after the ballots have been counted and the winner is declared.
TEXT: Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumaratunga says her efforts to negotiate with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam over the past six-years have failed. Mrs Kumaratunga, who lost an eye last year in an assassination attempt by a Tamil suicide bomber, says a military solution is the only one way left to end Sri Lanka's long-running war.
// KUMARATUNGA ACT //
We now believe that there is no other alternative that the L-T-T-E leaves for the government other than concluding the war successfully. But we will not waver from one moment from our commitment from solving the problem of the Tamil people and other minorities in this country through political solutions, which are embodied in the new constitution we have presented to the country and which I tried hard to present to the parliament a few months ago. We shall go forward with that, that has nothing to do with the L-T-T-E any more nor with the war.
// END ACT //
// OPT // Voters on Tuesday will decide if they agree with Mrs. Kumaratunga and elect a parliament who will pass her constitutional reforms, which allow for more political autonomy from the central government in Tamil-majority areas. The President's supporters in her People's Alliance coalition say the reforms are an attempt to offer Sri Lanka's minority Tamils, who make up about 13-percent of the population, a viable alternative to the Tamil Tigers. The reforms are opposed by many in Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese community that makes up 74-percent of the population. // END OPT //
Leading the opposition to the President's proposals is Ranil Wickremesinghe who heads the opposition United National Party. Mr. Wickremesinghe, a former Prime Minister, says he favors a cease-fire and talks with the Tamil rebels before initiating constitutional reforms. Mr. Wickremesinghe is vague about the details of his proposal, but many Sri Lankans say they like what they hear. Passing by a U-N-P rally on the last day of campaigning, Shivaji De Souza says the cost of the war has grown too high.
// DE SOUZA ACT //
Because it spills over into every aspect life, you know there are the disabled, there is the trauma experienced by every second household in this country who are in some way affected by the war, who have brothers, sisters or fathers in the army. You know it has caused economic chaos most of the chaos in this country is ultimately traceable to the ethnic conflict, yes.
// END ACT //
As the debate over how to end the war goes on in Colombo, heavy fighting continues in northern and eastern parts of the country. Earlier this year Tamil rebel forces captured several important objectives, including the strategic Elephant Pass that controls land access to the Jaffna Peninsula. But Sri Lanka's army has held the rebel's prime objective, Jaffna City, and after a series of attacks and counterattacks by both sides, there now appears to be a stalemate on the battlefield - with neither side able to break through the other's lines and score a decisive victory.
Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu is an influential Tamil lawyer and analyst at the Center for Policy Research and Analysis in Colombo. Mr. Saravanamuttu says the sooner all sides in the conflict realize the war cannot be won militarily, the better.
// SARAVANAMUTTU ACT //
Ever since the late 1970's, general's have been telling the chief executive's and their commander-in-chief's they can win this war - and it has yet to happen. So unless there are some new factors, which the rest of us are blissfully unaware of, the past record would suggest that military victory is not possible for the Sri Lankan army or indeed for the L-T-T-E either.
// END ACT //
Mr. Saravanamuttu and others say it is probably not possible for Sri Lankans themselves to end the conflict without some sort of outside facilitation or mediation. There have been intensive efforts by Norwegian diplomats during the past year to get all sides to the negotiating table. But those efforts have not resulted in any significant progress, leaving it up to Sri Lanka's voters on Tuesday to decide what the next step will be in the elusive search for a peaceful settlement to one of the world's most brutal conflicts. (SIGNED)
NEB/JLT/RAE
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