Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse would like India to get involved more directly in the peace talks between his government and the LTTE. According to informed sources in the government, Sri Lanka would prefer India to replace Norway as facilitator in the talks which broke down effectively in 2003.

The President himself did not specifically spell this out at a meeting with a delegation of the Indian Women’s Press Corps which visited the island nation last week, but he stressed the need for India’s greater involvement in Sri Lanka’s war against terrorism. ‘‘For everything we turn to India — in history and today.’’

It is not Rajapakse alone but almost anyone you meet in Sri Lanka who echoes this sentiment. The island’s big and influential neighbour should bail out the country in its ongoing guerrilla warfare against the LTTE, which is fighting for the rights of the country’s Tamil minority in the north and east of the nation.

Conscious that India has had its fingers badly burnt in the past, ‘‘India might not agree for a more active role because of its past history and experience’’ (India has banned the LTTE), the President is nevertheless hopeful. He believes only India has the capability and experience to bring Prabhakaran to the table.

The plebian from the heavily Sinhalese dominated southern part of the country wrested control of the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) last year from the patrician Bandarnaike family which had considered the party its private property for half a century. He knows he is in a tight spot. The SLFP is in power thanks to

... contd.