The eight-paragraph agreed statement that Norway’s International Development Minister, Erik Solheim, read out at the 18th century Chateu de Bossey overlooking Lake Geneva at the end of last week’s talks between delegations of the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and the LTTE summed up what are hopefully the areas of agreement between the two sides. Obviously much remained unsaid. From all accounts Anton Balasingham, if we may borrow the language of AFP, the French news agency, threatened to ``storm out’ of the discussion. His actual words to an AFP interviewer on that exchange with the government side were: ``If you are questioning the validity of the ceasefire agreement, then we will walk out.’

That, of course, was a foregone conclusion. The LTTE had from Day One made clear that the meeting they agreed to, with the Ceasefire Agreement stretched to near breaking point, was only to talk about its ``proper implementation.’ GOSL, perhaps wishfully, had hoped to amend it and had carried a draft to Geneva, according to un-contradicted reports. Most analysts agree that hoping to get that past Balasingham was the height of optimism or, more realistically, unrealism at its extreme. So the CFA of February 22, 2002, drafted behind President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s back according to those who now rule the roost, stands. So what Geneva 2006 was all about was the proper implementation of that agreement which GOSL in its opening statement at that meeting said was contrary ``to our Constitution and law’ and is ``prejudicial to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic.’ The government nevertheless admitted that some benefits to the people had flowed from the CFA and hence ``our strong determination and desire to preserve the ceasefire.’

The realistic analysis of what happened at Geneva is that the LTTE, which forced the meeting by the surge of violence it orchestrated in the claimed so-called ‘Tamil homeland’ in the northeast after President Mahinda Rajapakse’s election, has at least part-secured one of its main objectives - neutralizing Karuna. As the agreed statement set it out, the Tigers are now committed to take all necessary measures to stop their attacks on the security forces and police, over one hundred members of which they killed in the spike of violence in December and January before Solheim succeeded in setting up the Geneva talks. GOSL, according to the agreed statement, will ensure that nobody other than the government’s own forces will carry arms and conduct armed operations. So in return for the Tigers stopping what they started, blatantly and brazenly targeting the forces and among others sinking a naval gunboat, their long desired objective of getting the government to do their dirty work of getting Karuna out of their hair is accomplished.

This is the bottom line of Geneva. TamilNet self-servingly interpreted those few pregnant words in Soheim’s statement to mean that ‘GOSL will disarm paramilitaries.’ There is no talk of disarming anybody but there is a clear obligation to prevent the bearing of arms and the conduct of armed operations. Already there are reports that Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, or Colonel Karuna as he is best known, the LTTE’s renegade Eastern Commander, has said that he is quite prepared to lay down arms if the Tigers would do the same. How the government will tackle its obligations under what is undoubtedly the most significant point of agreement in Geneva remains to be seen. Karuna most likely is not in the country and it has been speculatively reported that he is somewhere in India. Those reports, of course, are purely speculative. The Indians have long been players, both overt and covert, in the Sri Lankan tragedy they helped create by making the monster that is the LTTE. Somawansa Amarasinghe, the JVP leader, left this country when that party engaged in its second bloody adventure in the late eighties with Indian assistance. Varatharajah Perumal, the first chief minister of the temporarily merged Northeastern Province was given sanctuary in India when the IPKF pulled out. So nobody need be surprised if India is also playing a Karuna card.

What follows now? As in 2002 when the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration signed the CFA, we will certainly have a sense of euphoria which the state media particularly will vigorously promote now as then. The stock market moved up on Friday as the first news from Geneva trickled in and the stockbroking industry, no doubt, as well as market players will hope that the upswing will continue. That chilling feeling that the Sun God in the Wanni created in the collective national spine in December and January will evaporate if that has not already happened by now. Whether the government will, as it can, enlist those the Tigers call ``paramilitaries,’’ the SLMM ``armed elements’’ and the rest of us ``the Karuna group’’ into its own forces for service outside the northern and eastern provinces remains to be seen.

Meanwhile Prabhakaran, Balasingham and the rest will lick their chops awaiting the flow of foreign funds that can now be expected both for tsunami reconstruction as well as economic development. A great deal of foreign assistance is likely to come in, as it did on the basis of the cessation of hostilities in terms of the CFA which was bad under the Ranil Wickremesinghe dispensation but is being tolerated if not countenanced by his successors. No doubt we will hear noises from the various players on the national stage in the weeks and months to follow but those from the JVP and JHU are not likely to rock the Rajapakse boat. The next two months will be testing times for the Geneva truce the implementation of which will be reported on in April by the SLMM which will by then have a new head, not from Norway but from Sweden. Investment in the war-torn parts of the country as well as those northern and eastern coastal areas wracked by the tsunami will indeed be both welcome relief and hope to that section of Sri Lanka’s people who have suffered most from a mindless war. It will also be good for the national economy.

We must all await the next episode of the cat and mouse negotiation game, the last round of which was played in Geneva. As with the CFA, the LTTE gained. Once again the Tigers notched what will be a plus on their balance sheet - neutralizing Karuna if that happens - by graciously (???) agreeing to stop what they started. That was the dangerous game of trying to take this country back to war by targeting the security forces mainly in the northern parts of the conflict theatre. They were less able to do that in the East thanks to the Karuna presence.