Why wary India is seeking a role in Sri Lanka

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Why wary India is seeking a role in Sri Lanka

By Ameen Izzadeen

11 July 2006

SOUTH Block in New Delhi must be busy drafting and redrafting India’s policy towards its neighbours. Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran was in Sri Lanka last week, telling government and opposition leaders about what India thought they should do, while special envoy Sitaram Yechuri, a Communist Party leader, was in Nepal on a similar mission.

The two missions had clear messages to the leaders of the two countries. In Nepal, Yechuri, whose party has differences with the Congress Party over privatisation reforms, was in congruence with the thinking of South Block when he articulated India’s stand with regard to new political realities in Nepal. He said India should have no objection towards a possible United Nations role in Nepal — a demand put forward by the Maoist rebels to enter the political mainstream. But the media in Nepal speculated that Yechuri’s mission was to advise the interim government and the Maoists, albeit diplomatically, on the parameters of India’s limits of tolerance.

In Sri Lanka, Sharan advised government and opposition leaders on how they should get about with the threat facing the country with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam increasing the tempo of violence. He was not licensed to meet the LTTE, a banned terrorist group in India. Saran is due to retire from his post later this year, but he is tipped to get a post at the Prime Minister’s Office as an adviser, especially on Sri Lankan affairs. His visit was unannounced and unscheduled, but it was certainly not like how US President George W. Bush visited Iraq last month.

The government was informed that Saran was coming, but it was not in a position to raise the ante and say "the President is busy and unable to meet him" — a diplomatic snub sometimes thrown at Norwegian facilitators when Colombo wants to express its displeasure over Oslo’s alleged mollycoddling with the Tiger rebels. The India’s top diplomat was here not only because India was concerned about the escalating violence and its spillover effect on Tamil Nadu, but also because India was alarmed by reported moves aimed at bringing in Britain or the UN as mediators instead of Norway.

New Delhi can welcome the presence of Norway or the UN as facilitator in Nepal where it is concerned about China’s growing influence, or in Sri Lanka, but not the presence of a country that may not heed India’s concerns. But when India felt that Sri Lanka was seriously toying with the idea of roping in players more powerful than Norway, it was to time to act. The Saran mission came hard on the heels of a visit by Sinn Fein Chief negotiator Martin McGuiness to Sri Lanka where he met the President and LTTE leaders. His visit follows a secret trip to Britain by an adviser of President Rajapaksa who is desperate to stop the present low-intensity war exploding into a full-scale war.

The presidential envoy is reported to have discussed with British government officials about the worsening security situation in Sri Lanka and even invited Britain, our colonial master whose divide-and-rule policy is seen by some as the root cause of the ethnic crisis, to play a facilitator role.

Some analysts here believe that there is more to it than meets the eye in the visit of McGuiness to Colombo and on a special Air Force helicopter to Kilinochchi to meet the Tiger leaders.

Saran’s visit heralded a significant shift in India’s Sri Lanka policy which Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee put in some perspective when he addressed a media conference at a high-level Asia-Pacific security meeting in Singapore last month.

Mukherjee said New Delhi would not play an active role in the Sri Lankan peace process although it fully supported Colombo’s search for peace.

He said India avoided an active role in Sri Lanka’s peace process because of ethnic reasons and its belief that a "pro-active and active participation will complicate the issue instead of resolving it". But last week Saran was advising the government and the opposition what to do and what not to do. He is reported to have told the President to draw a distinction between the LTTE and the Tamil community. He urged the government to offer the Tamil people a devolution proposal and said India would be more than happy to share its devolution model with Sri Lanka.

But whether Rajapaksa will heed India’s advice and offer federalism as a solution remains to be seen. After all, federalism is a taboo word in the Sinhalese-dominated southern parts of the country, although Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe had political courage to include it in his election manifesto last year.

Rajapaksa was returned to office on a pledge that he would devolve power within a unitary Sri Lanka while Wickremesinghe said it would be within a united Sri Lanka. The government now says it would devolve power within an "undivided" country. It is naïve to believe that political nomenclature and the Indian model could offer a solution. If so, the problem could have been solved long time ago.

With India signalling an active shift in its Sri Lanka policy, hope is stirred in this peace-starved country. During the week when McGuiness and Saran were here, there was a lull in the violence. President Rajapaksa is reported to have told Saran that India cannot find a better friend in Sri Lanka than him. In diplomatic parlance, a friend could also mean a vassal. But such a diplomatic stance is a price worth paying for the sake of peace.

Ameen Izzaddeen is a Sri Lankan journalist based in Colombo

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