"War Spells Doom For The Entire Country"

Time Asia Magazine

Monday, May. 22, 2006

TIME talks to chief Tamil negotiator Anton Balasingham about Sri Lanka's faltering cease-fire BY ALEX PERRY

Anton Balasingham is the chief negotiator for the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (L.T.T.E.), brought into the organization by leader Vellupillai Prbhakaran to provide theoretical depth to Tamil nationalism. In a rare email interview from his London home, he spoke to TIME about the rising tide of violence in Sri Lanka and what hope remains for peace.

TIME: What do both sides want?
Balasingham: The conflict is essentially an ethnic conflict having its roots in the long history of oppression and racial discrimination of the minority Tamils by successive Sinhala dominated governments. The L.T.T.E. favors a form of regional autonomy and self-government as a solution to the Tamil question. The government of President [Mahinda] Rajapakse has not yet presented a coherent policy or formula to resolve the ethnic conflict. The government has been insisting that a solution should be found within the parameters of Sri Lanka's rigid majoritarian constitution, thereby closing the doors to the Tamil demand for regional self-government. The government's ill-conceived policy is further complicated by the hard-line position of its major allied party, the JVP [Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna], who have characterized the ethnic issue as a terrorist phenomenon and call for an all-out war to resolve the problem. The Tamil demand for self-governance in their historical homeland and Rajapaske's government's insistence on an ill-defined solution within an entrenched unitary constitution are contradictory and irreconcilable.

More: http://www.time.com/time/asia/news/magazine/0,9754,1196485,00.html