Not banning the LTTE is wise

 

NEW DELHI: Good sense prevailed on the Sri Lanka government as the cabinet withstood pressure from the hardline Sinhala Buddhists to ban the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. After the recent attempt by a suicide bomber to kill the country's defence secretary, who also happens to be President Mahindra Rajapakse's brother, the demand for outlawing the Tigers gathered force.

 

Though the LTTE is banned in India, US and several European countries, the outfit is, surprisingly, not outlawed in Sri Lanka since September 2002, as part of a confidence-building measure after a Norwegian brokered ceasefire agreement was signed by the LTTE and the government.

 

The  LTTE was outlawed in 1998 after the rebels exploded a truck bomb, badly damaging the Temple of Buddha’s Tooth relic, a sacred place for the island's predominantly Buddhist majority. Reimposing the ban now would be the final nail in the coffin for the already tattered peace process. It would also give the Tigers a chance to blame President Rajapakse's hardline policies.

 

Rajapakse, who is already being painted by the LTTE and its supporters as a Sinhala chauvinist, ready to bombard  Tamil civilians in the North and East, cannot afford to let that image gain currency.

 

Already the LTTE propaganda machine is at work, and whispers about the President's hard-line image is percolating into India and the more dangerously to South Block. When Rajapakse was in Delhi recently, India already warned him that human rights violations in the island and indiscriminate bombings would boomerang on the government. It would also resonate in India's domestic politics. “The decision not to ban the Tigers is a wise. A ban now will further vitiate the atmosphere and make the situation in even difficult,” said a senior Indian official, who did not wish to be identified.

 

Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera too doesn’t think a ban would yield results. “We saw what happened when we banned the LTTE in 1998,” Samaraweera said, referring to the ban slapped after the LTTE bombed the Temple of the (Buddha's) Tooth in 1998. “Subsequently, that did not stop them from continuing with their acts of violence,” he said.

 

The attack on defense secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, has encouraged sections within the Sri Lankan establishment to take a tough line against the Tigers. These sections believe there can be no peace in the island so long as the LTTE chief continues to call the shots.

 

However at a time when the President is hoping to build a Southern consensus on the devolution package for the Tamils, the decision not to ban the Tigers has been welcomed by those who want to see a negotiated settlement.

 

But Colombo has said it will strictly enforce the anti-terrorist regulations. “Due to increasing threat of violence, the Cabinet decided to strengthen regulations,” PM Ratnasiri Wickramanayake said. The anti-terror laws in other countries gives sweeping powers of arrest and detention to the security forces. — Inputs from agencies