Rajapakse’s reaction came as no surprise. After being told of the LTTE offer, Rajapakse reportedly directed Kohona to “pack your bags and get back soon”. Pulidevan, should lead the LTTE delegation. He proposed on protocol grounds that a lesser figure, the LTTE peace secretariat head S.
Thamilchelvan objected to the lack of a cabinet minister in the government delegation, which was led by Palitha Kohona, head of the Sri Lanka peace secretariat. The Rajapakse government has tried to maintain the increasingly threadbare charade that the military has no connection to the militia or their provocative attacks on LTTE officials, soldiers and supporters. The Sri Lankan delegation threatened to pull out of the talks completely if a damning SLMM report pointing to the military’s complicity in attacks on the LTTE by Tamil paramilitary groups was made public before or during the talks. A further round of discussions was due to take place in April, but was delayed then postponed indefinitely amid spiralling violence in the island’s war zones.īoth objectives failed completely. The first top-level talks in three years took place in Geneva on February 22-23, but failed to agree on anything other than to reaffirm adherence to the 2002 ceasefire. The meeting was also intended as a means for trying to reestablish broader negotiations. Norwegian officials complained that an LTTE attack on Sri Lankan navy vessels in May had endangered the lives of SLMM observers on board and that the Sri Lankan military had hampered its activities.
Norway, the formal facilitator of the peace process, requested talks with both sides for the limited purpose of ensuring the safety of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) which oversees the ceasefire.
With the 2002 ceasefire agreement in tatters and the entire peace process sponsored by the major powers in doubt, Sri Lanka once again stands on the brink of full-scale civil war. While Norwegian diplomats blamed the LTTE, the collapse of the talks is a product of the escalating violence in the North and East of the island since the election of Mahinda Rajapakse as Sri Lankan president last November. The two delegations arrived in the Norwegian capital, were escorted to a hotel for discussions on June 8-9, but never sat down together at the negotiating table. Last week’s scheduled talks in Oslo between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) broke down even before they started.
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