Efforts mediated by Norway to end the 19-year Sri Lankan civil war advanced further yesterday with an announcement by the Sri Lankan government that it formally supports power-sharing with the Tamil Tigers.
The chief government spokesman in the divided island's capital city of Colombo, Gamini Peiris, said matters were "heading in the direction" of a federal system, after a decision by the Tigers to drop their demand for a separate homeland.
"Now that the (Tigers have) ruled out separatism, we are working on how to share power and yes, we fully agree to the federal status formula," he told reporters.
Almost 65,000 lives have been lost in the war in which the Tamil Tiger guerrillas have been fighting for an independent state in the north and east of the island for the Tamil minority, on the grounds that they are routinely discriminated against by the Sinhalese majority.
Mr Peiris said that details of the power-sharing plan will be worked out when the representatives of the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers meet in Thailand in January for the fourth round of peace talks, mediated by the Norwegians.
There is some scepticism, including allegations that the Tigers - officially called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) - are using the talks to re-group. The region has not forgotten the failed attempt at an accord by India's Rajiv Gandhi in 1987, that led to the dispatch and withdrawal of an Indian peacekeeping force, or the collapse of the much-trumpetted 1995 ceasefire.
There is predictable opposition within Sri Lanka's Sinhalese to making concessions to the Tamils: the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress said over the weekend that, while mainly Hindu Tamils and other minorities should have economic and social rights, political decisions should be made by the majority Buddhist Sinhalese alone.
But the current signs of progress appear to be concrete. Representatives of the Tigers have already reportedly visited Switzerland to study the federal system there, and - according to Mr Peiris - are examining examples in Canada, Australia, Germany and India.
Mr Peiris acknowledged what is already known across the war-battered island - that the path to peace would not be easy. "But," he said, "we have a clear trajectory as to where we are going and that is towards federalism."
- INDEPENDENT
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