SATTAHIP, Thailand, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- The Sri Lankan government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam will start three days of peace talks Monday in an effort to find a solution to the ethnic conflict that has claimed over 70,000 lives.
The closed door meetings are being held at the Sattahip Naval Base of the Royal Thai Navy, with the Norwegian government acting as facilitator.
Supported by the United States and other countries, the government and the LTTE are meeting for the first time following after the latest ceasefire agreement, signed in February this year, raised new hopes of peace. But several previous peace negotiations since the conflict began in 1983 have ended in failure.
Observers said recent shifts in the position of both sides appeared to improve chances of success. In April, LTTE guerrilla leader Velupillai Pirabhkaran announced that the LTTE was ready to talk peace, but would not give up the demand for a separate state.
The rebels, however, have come to terms with the possibility of an interim administration for the north and east of the country under their control. The modalities of creating this interim administration will be one of the major issues at the talks.
The LTTE started the armed struggle for a separate homeland for the minority Tamil community, the Tamil Eelam, in 1883. Armed and aided by the Indian government, the LTTE's war machine proved a major challenge to the Sri Lankan troops. Within a year, the guerrillas had gained total control over the Tamil-dominated northern Jaffna peninsula.
Two years later came the first serious attempt to settle the conflict through negotiation. Sri Lankan government representatives met LTTE leaders in the Bhutanese capital of Thimpu, but the two sides failed to reach an agreement. The Tamil Tigers' insistence on self-determination turned out to be the sticking point.
In 1987, the governments of Sri Lanka and India signed an accord, which envisaged creation of provincial councils to give limited autonomy to the Tamil-dominated north and east. Initially the LTTE agreed to the move, but three months later it went back and launched a bloody battle against the Indian Peacekeeping Force that had been deployed in the north and east of Sri Lanka, killing some 1,200 Indian soldiers.
Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa reopened talks with the LTTE in February 1990. By June the negotiations had again failed. The guerrillas overran police stations in the east, killing at least 700 policemen.
In May 1991, a suspected LTTE suicide bomber assassinated former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the southern Indian town of Sriperambudur. Rajiv Gandhi had signed the peace accord with Sri Lanka in 1987 and was also responsible for sending the IPKF. Two years later, another suspected LTTE suicide blew up President Premadasa.
In 1994, faced with widespread LTTE attacks, even in the capital, Colombo, President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who had been elected on a promise of bringing peace to SriLanka, arranged a cease fire with the rebels. When that failed she launched an all-out offensive against the Tamil Tigers which she called "War for peace."
Government troops captured Jaffna peninsula in December 1995 delivering a major blow to the LTTE. The guerrillas took shelter in the dense forest of the northern Wanni mainland, some 400 kilometers north of the capital Colombo, as the war continued, a woman suicide bomber blew herself up as Kumaratunga was getting into her car.
Kumaratunga survived the attack, but lost her right eye. In December 2001, fresh elections were held and the opposition United National Party came to power. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe revived the peace process and invited the Norwegian government to facilitate it. Pirabhkaran announced a unilateral ceasefire, and the government followed suit.
Soon after becoming the prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe had cautioned the country that road to peace could be painful, but war was more painful than that.
The government delegation in Satthip is led by the minister for constitutional affairs, Prof. G. L. Pieris. The LTTE's chief negotiator is Anton Balasingham. A London-based lawyer and the LTTE's legal adviser V. Rudrakumar, an Australia-based development and rehabilitation specialist, Dr. Jay Maheswaran, and Balasingham's wife Adele Balasingham are the other three representatives of the guerrillas.
