Continued from yesterday

A: And manipulable. Our electorate have shown time and again that they have tremendous maturity. And last time, I would say more than ever, I am not making a party political point on this, but more than ever because they deliberately avoided choosing an option that involved further alienation of the Sinhala and Tamil people. Because don’t forget that part of the campaign was fought on the footing that a vote for the PA was a vote for the Tigers. You remember that. And the people refused to be seduced by that argument. That shows tremendous maturity. That is why I re-affirm my belief that the great mass of the people, I’m always talking about my concept of the mass of the people: good, solid citizens.

A: The problem with the Eelam lobbies and I have discussed this with various governments in the course of our wide ranging discussion on variety of matters. The problem is that some of these Western governments that you mention take up this position, that the LTTE is not even outlawed here in Sri Lanka, and they had difficulty therefore in outlawing a party which is not even outlawed in its own home base. Secondly, many of them have a long history of giving haven to so called liberation movements under certain conditions, mainly that they do not violate the laws of the host country. And some of these governments say that they cant, legally say, that the LTTE is violating the laws of the host country even if it is collecting subscriptions.

A: Abroad, innocent people abroad. If it kills innocent people in the host country is another matter entirely and if they are proved to be parties and are extorting money from other Tamils living in these countries by force, and it can be proved that they are doing it by force, they would be infringing a law of that country, but apparently proof of that kind is not readily available. All that they can do and they are willing to do is to make it clear, as clear as they can according to their methods and means, that they consider it vital that the LTTE should go to the negotiating table that way to bring some pressure on these communities that they have there.

A: Saying that alone obviously won’t do, but what they say is, that if they don’t outlaw them they have better means of keeping them under surveillance. If they are outlawed then they go underground, it makes life more difficult for the police forces of these host countries. So that is the situation in which we are, it is not an easy situation but that is the situation in which we are.

A: Mediation, I think, is really unthinkable unless the two parties concerned are ready for mediation. You will recall that some months ago, the President wrote to Mr. Prabhakaran and suggested that we could jointly use the good offices of a French diplomat supplied by the French Government to act even at the lowest level as a courier, and no more but that was summarily rejected by the LTTE.

A: At this point of time, No. Because you can’t mediate unilaterally. Mediation by its very essence means that two people have said to themselves finally: Well, we cannot talk to each other directly. We want a solution to be reached. Therefore let us invite a third party or parties to do the talking for us. There must be a climate for that. At the moment with the LTTE behaving as it is, I don’t see any prospect of any such thing happening now.

A: A number of people have offered.

A: Australia recently, but they made an offer and then the Foreign Minister made it very clear to me that he is not pressing it because he realizes that the situation is not ripe and so on. He modified that considerably. In fact I must say to his credit that he did not actually make an offer, some newspapers said that he had made an offer but he he told me that he had not made an offer in that sense. But the Norwegians have offered, other countries - Sweden also as far as I can remember. Generally speaking the friendly countries when they come to talk to us on various issues say: By the way if there is anything that we can do in the mediation field, let us know.

A: No. Nobody. Everybody takes the realistic view you can’t initiate contacts when one party is so totally unwilling, It might change, that is another matter, I am talking at the moment of the present situation.

A: Well, it is not a pleasant situation, but then politics is not full of pleasant situations. In politics one has to be flexible, the world doesn’t stand still. Political parties don’t run according to textbooks. You can’t rule or govern a country or ad minister a country according to a certain set patterns. It would be marvellous if one could do that. If you lay down the agenda yourself and make sure that nobody else disturbs the agenda and then you carry on, real life is not like that and therefore we have to be flexible and adaptable, and we are doing the best we can in very trying circumstances. Bearing in mind certain commitments that the government has, and this question of finding ultimately, I emphasise ultimately, a peaceful negotiated settlement to the ethnic problem is a commitment on the party of our President and this government. It is a commitment. It is a question now of how you do it, and I am very clearly of the opinion that at the present moment the war against the LTTE simply has to be continued and prosecuted vigorously. There is simply no other alternative, not merely is there no other alternative, but it may be a very necessary situation for us to enter, in order to achieve that ultimate solution. The LTTE must be persuaded. Must be made to realize that war is not going to achieve for them what they want to achieve. They have to be persuaded on that.

A: Of course, that is so. We must prosecute as speedily and as effectively as we are able to. We mustn’t loll about. We mustn’t dawdle about. It has to be done vigorously and quietly.

A: That is very necessary to do because there is a grave danger also that the international community which has extended a lot of goodwill and friendship to us, and the effects of that goodwill are incalculable. I mean it comes in various forms.

Sometimes in unforeseen ways. And they must not ever get the impression that we are prosecuting the war in a manner that doesn’t take into account civilians concerns. They must always feel that although in a wartime situation excesses are bound to happen, but there is no plan to commit excesses and to harass civilians. If they are satisfied about that and if our armed forces behave in that way we should be alright on that front.

A: In a sense Ravi that is true. But I have always had the feeling that you know in life one must look beyond ethnicity, that you are born into a certain ethnic situation but you need not be necessarily totally conditioned by it. That’s the way I have lived my own life and therefore I am able to take a broader view taking into account different points of view not conditioned solely by the fact that I am an ethnic Tamil and I wish very much that more people could take that attitude.

A: It is only a terrorist problem as our previous President said. Well I don’t subscribe to that view because the terrorist problem is in my opinion a manifestation, a very ugly manifestation but a manifestation of a deep seated problem that certainly existed and that is a problem which I am very confident that, that is why I give my whole-hearted support to this government and to our President, that is a problem which I feel that this government can address, that is to give to the Tamil people the necessary assurances both by word and deed that a new chapter in the relations between the communities is going to open.

A: No No. I don’t think she is a lone liberal voice at all. There are a lot of splendid people in the PA. There again from all walks of life. I get back to my point about the ordinary people, the so called ordinary people. The so called ordinary people are really quite extraordinary in the way that they react to some situations, many situations, most situations. And there are splendid people like that in their hundreds and thousands in the ranks of the PA.

A: I am hopeful and I have this feeling. I may be wrong. I hope I am not wrong but we are all speculating on matters of this kind, that perhaps this time the LTTE Might have over-reached itself.

Q: Can you expect the Tamil people to react the LTTE?

A: That would be expecting a great deal from the people who are as helpless, and handicapped as they are. It’s rather like saying during the war that the resistance movements in Nazi occupied territory should have won the war single handed. That doesn’t happen. But when resentment and disenchantment builds up, then a guerrilla group is always at a disadvantage, because of Mao’s famous dictum as you know that the guerrillas are the fish who swim in the waters, provided by the people and so on. But if the people don’t provide waters for the fish to swim in, then of course there is going to be a different situation as far as the LTTE is concerned. These are the things that we are going to see develop shortly.