The visit of Prof. Piet Miering, a former member of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to Sri Lanka last week revealed a lacuna to be filled. The reluctance of the Sri Lankan civil and political leadership to plan beyond the present conflict situation became evident in a discussion organised in Colombo by the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung on "Sustaining Peace after the Fighting Stops."

It was as if a giant boulder was lying on the road and completely obstructing the view ahead. At present due to Norwegian facilitation and pressure from the international community, the country appears to be on the verge of peace talks.

The depletion of human and economic resources that can be mobilised for war by the two parties is more pronounced than ever before.

Despite the government's insistence that it will not enter into a ceasefire with the LTTE it is likely that the anticipated peace talks will be accompanied by a gradual de-escalation of hostilities. The resistance to embracing a ceasefire stems from the previous breakdowns of ceasefires and the escalated fighting that followed those breakdowns.

But the continuation of war is a price that does not have to be demanded for the failure of previous peace ceasefires.

Instead there is a need to find mechanisms by which a ceasefire can be sustained without a renewed outbreak of fighting. International monitoring backed up by local civic action groups could provide one such mechanism. But none of this was discussed at the seminar.

It seemed that the Sri Lankan participants were too occupied by pre-peace talk issues to be able to comment usefully on post-conflict issues. In his presentation, Prof. Meiring spoke about the functioning of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after peace came to South Africa. It was one of several mechanisms that South Africa put into place to ensure that peace could be sustained.

The Commission was based on the premise that the past should not be put aside or swept under the carpet. Even while the celebrations on the new South Africa took place, South Africa's new leaders decided that there had to be remembrance and a recording of what had happened. The voice of the victims had to be heard so that the past would never again be repeated.

Remembrance mechanism

There are other societies too that have created new futures for themselves by transforming themselves. Germany is an example of such a society. In the city of Bonn, the former capital of West Germany, is a state-run museum of history. The atrocities of the Nazi period are recorded in it.

Hundreds of people come everyday to see the museum. They also see expressions of gratitude to the United States which helped Germany to democratise and rebuild itself after the war.

On the streets of Berlin are information booths titled "Lest we forget" which gives details of Nazi abuses that took place in that particular location. The Sri Lankan situation is undoubtedly different from those of South Africa and Germany both in the scale and content of the problem and solution.

In South Africa there was a change of government from one controlled by whites to one controlled by blacks. The transfer of power took place through negotiations between two undefeated parties. As a result there were no severe punishments for those who led the two sides.

But still for all one side took over the reins of power completely. Therefore it was possible to investigate the past in great detail and surface it. According to Prof. Meiring, a great majority of blacks approved the workings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

But only one-third of whites similarly gave their approval. In general it is the victims who want the truth to surface. In the case of Germany, at the end of the war it was completely defeated.

Therefore it was possible to punish the wrongdoers on the defeated side. The Nuremberg trials and executions of convicted Nazis took place in the glare of international publicity. The defeated Nazis could be exposed and condemned an a new future without them could be created.

The successor German governments have taken a decision to keep the past alive so that future generations may be humble and not be tempted to go down the Nazi path again. If peace is to come to Sri Lanka soon, it will come through negotiations between two undefeated foes., There will be no victor or vanquished. Nor will there be a complete transfer of power from one side to another.

Instead Sri Lanka will have a negotiated and compromise solution that will share power between the two sides. There will be neither a South African or German scenario that can be simply copied. Sri Lanka will have to find its own way drawing on relevant elements from the experiences of other countries.

The government and LTTE would well to consider the mechanisms developed in South Africa and Germany to sustain peace after the fighting stops. The fighting may not stop tomorrow, but it will one day.

The South African experience is one of a meticulous recording of the past. It is of the unburdening of the hearts of the victims.

It is also one of granting amnesty to wrongdoers who were prepared to expose their past so that the truth would be known.

The German experience is one of self-critical exposure of the past for future generations to bear in mind even fifty years after the events.

These are some of the key elements that have a relevance to Sri Lanka. Despite the inability, or unpreparedness, of the Sri Lankan participants at the seminar with Prof. Meiring to envision a post-conflict scenario and talk about it, there was a positive feature that emerged.

After they had scored some rather petty political points at each other's expense, politicians from the government and opposition who were present spoke in a self-critical manner about what had gone wrong in the past. They even accepted some degree of responsibility for what had gone wrong.

It was an open dialogue that set a foundation for more dialogue in the future. To give some examples, a government member admitted that ignorance of the ground situation had led to many faulty decisions being taken over the years that had proved to be very costly.

An opposition member said that politicians needed signals from the people before they got motivated to take action themselves and appealed to civil society to show that people's power lay with reconciliation rather than bitterness.

The problem is that civil society is itself a part of the conflict and is polarised on the ethnic issue.

Civil society itself requires the space for reconciliation work that only ceasefires and enlightened political leadership can provide.