Lanka truce -- Norwegian envoy offers little hope after meeting Prabhakaran

Lanka truce -- Norwegian envoy offers little hope after meeting Prabhakaran
SONIA TRIKHA

NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 23: The Norwegian facilitator of talks between the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE, Erik Solheim, today trashed rumours about the ill-health of LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran while reiterating that Prabhakaran had set ‘‘no pre-conditions for talks with the Sri Lankan Government’’.

Solheim formed part of a high-level Norwegian team including State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry Raymond Johansen that met External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and held bilateral discussions with Foreign Secretary Lalit Mansingh.

On the situation in Sri Lanka, because of Solheim’s role in bringing peace in war-torn Jaffna, the Norwegian team briefed Singh on recent interactions Solheim had in that country. Singh said New Delhi is strongly committed to unity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Sri Lanka. Singh also conveyed India’s ‘‘good wishes to Solheim in his role as facilitator’’. Solheim described India’s role as ‘‘absolutely helpful’’.

According to Solheim, he met the LTTE leader early this month at his invitation, and ‘‘I carried no message to Prabhakaran from the Sri Lankan government and I brought no message back from the LTTE leader either’’.

Describing his reaction to the meeting, Solheim said: ‘‘I’m hopeful but I’m a realist.’’ Given the current situation he does not foresee a breakthrough though.He said: ‘‘No one should accept the following as a starting point, that the Government will withdraw forces or that the LTTE will lay down arms but a process will have to start somewhere.’’

According to Solheim, that ‘somewhere’ could be through confidence building measures such as allowing more goods into the Jaffna Peninsula. The main purpose of Solheim’s visit was Prabhakaran’s attempt to show the very difficult conditions in the north, especially where the meeting took place in Vanni. Going by the impression that Solheim has returned with certainly confirms Prabhakaran’s point of view. Solheim says: ‘‘Prabhakaran was very soft-spoken and not at all propagandist but I saw the shops are half-empty and fuel prices are 10 times of what they were in southern Sri Lanka and there is shortage of medicine supplies.’’

Contrary to Sri Lankan foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar’s saying that the Norwegian’s meeting did not merit ‘‘euphoria’’, Solheim called his meeting with the LTTE leader a ‘‘significant’’ step because it was Prabhakaran’s first with a foreigner in almost five years and the first interaction with a foreign negotiator since the late 1980s when he talked to the Indians.

On a cautious note Solheim added that Prabhakaran, however, ‘‘did not commit himself to any peace package’’. For his part, the Norwegian said he laid down his two-point position, that is endoresd by the international community, that any solution will have to be created within the integrity of Sri Lanka and that the Tamil apirations will have to be met in a substantial manner.

Solheim has been to Sri Lanka nearly on 10 occassions for talks between the LTTE and the Government and he hopes to go again soon. But he’s not laying any bets on how soon a breakthrough will happen. ‘‘It could be a few days or it could be many years. You can’t tell, there are surprises, negative and positive. Just look at what happened in the Middle-East and the Koreas.’’