Norwegian Minister cum Special Peace Envoy Eric Solheim, at a meeting with Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, is reported to have said (The Sunday Island of Dec. 04) that Oslo is not happy being made a scapegoat for setbacks or slow progress in the peace process in Sri Lanka. Norway cannot play a worthwhile role, he has said, to help achieve peace in Sri Lanka if it gets blamed for the failure of the peace process to move forward.

He, who sleeps with dogs, so goes a Sri Lankan saying, gets up with ticks. Solheim has done just that. He has slept not with ordinary dogs but ferocious Tigers. However, the outcome has been the same; he is covered with ticks and has a flea in his ear.

One may lead a horse to water, it is said, but twenty cannot make it drink. On several occasions in the past, the LTTE has been led to talks but all peace brokers have failed to make it agree to a solution or prevent it from walking away. India tried to do so but failed in spite of having bred and nurtured the animal itself. Likewise, Norway failed to reverse the LTTE's decision to unilaterally stall talks in 2003. So, we are where we are!

The LTTE is adept at using a peace process and the peace brokers both to overcome its difficulties in the short run. We have Solheim telling us that Norway should not be seen as a midwife in establishing a dictatorship in the north and the east of Sri Lanka. Norway has, in the eyes of the discerning, been acting not as a midwife but as a mistress of the LTTE. Under the UNF regime, the peace process became a veritable m`E9nage a trois with the Wickremesinghe government, the LTTE and Norway living together under one roof.

The controversial role the Norwegians played in importing a consignment of high tech communication equipment to the LTTE, of course, with the connivance of the UNF government alone is sufficient proof that it overstepped its role as facilitator and favoured the LTTE. Norway also stands accused by her own press of having granted a huge amount of funds (25 million kroner) to the LTTE. The partiality of the Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) to the LTTE––they have had the chutzpah to even invent a 'ghost theory' to help the LTTE get away with the sinking of a Chinese trawler and various other acts of terror––shows how Norway has been aiding and abetting the LTTE's project of 'establishing a dictatorship'. It is not for nothing, we believe, that the Norwegians have come to be dubbed White Tigers by the critics of the Tigers.

What Solheim and his soul mates had better remember is that most of those who gave the LTTE funds and helped it in numerous other ways are now dead. For, the LTTE usually says it not with flowers but with explosive devices. Rajiv Gandhi and President Premadasa had, in return for service rendered to the Tigers, suicide bombers.

The lopsidedness of the CFA, which has given the LTTE access to the government controlled areas to unleash terror under the pretext of doing political work, is another case in point. At the time of writing (2.00 p.m yesterday), the LTTE had killed six soldiers by exploding a claymore mine near Jaffna. But for the unbridled freedom of movement granted to the LTTE, such attacks wouldn't have been possible. Bound by the CFA, the government has to take everything lying down while the LTTE is having a field day.

Had Norway been impartial and acted like a true facilitator, it wouldn't have had to go behind anyone seeking to retain its role under the new political dispensation: Instead, it would have had the new government and many others coming behind it beseeching it to continue to play that role. It looks as if Tigers were flexing muscles to deceive the world into belief that without their Norwegian friends as facilitators the peace process is doomed.

Solheim has reportedly told India that there can be no peace in Sri Lanka without India's support and guarantee. We reported yesterday quoting well placed sources that India had expressed her belief that an enduring solution could only emerge essentially through 'an internal political process' within a unitary Sri Lanka.

India has, Solheim should realise, caused Sri Lanka to grant, in the 13th Amendment, the maximum possible devolution it could afford without risking her own territorial integrity. Had it been possible for India to go beyond that it would have done so at that time, when the LTTE posed no threat to her and was eating off its palm, and not certainly today. Solheim has said Norway has no position of its own on the type of federalism Sri Lanka wishes to choose by way of a solution and will be comfortable with what is acceptable to the Sri Lanka state and the LTTE. He may be telling us the truth, but if Norway thinks it and its international allies will be able to persuade India to allow Sri Lanka to go beyond what is envisaged in the Indo Lanka Accord, they are mistaken.