No one in the world can trust the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which has a long history of making peace overtures when it feels cornered, only to change colour and posture the minute it thinks that conditions have changed. The frustrating record of negotiations and truce arrangements in Sri Lanka's protracted civil war bears testimony to the LTTE's penchant for cynical and tactical short-term moves, oblivious of the damage this does to its strategic vision of a Tamil homeland on the island. The proximate reason for its holding out an olive branch to India, by admitting after 15 long years that it assassinated Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and seeking a magnanimous India's involvement in the struggle for Eelam, is the growing western impatience with the Tigers' tactics and methods. The organisation has been declared a terrorist outfit, it faces a ban on its activities (which would impact its fund-raising activities in Europe), and fresh hostilities have broken out with Sri Lanka's security forces. In short, the LTTE feels the need for friends, and India is an obvious candidate. | |
| It would be surprising if the LTTE's spokesman, Anton Balasingham, expects India to respond positively to his remarks to a TV station. He and the rest of the LTTE leadership must know that Rajiv Gandhi's assassination constitutes the most serious external assault on India in the last three decades, and everyone in India would expect justice to be first done before there can be any rapprochement with the LTTE. This means that Velupillai Prabhakaran, LTTE's supreme leader and the man who ordered the assassination, must be brought to justice. Since Mr Prabhakaran is not about to offer himself up for arrest and trial, the LTTE confession and request for magnanimity mean nothing. Perhaps Mr Balasingham is encouraged by the return to power of the DMK in Chennai, but admission of guilt in the Rajiv assassination only makes it more difficult for LTTE sympathisers in Tamil Nadu to play their card. Or perhaps Mr Balasingham is thinking two or three steps ahead; whatever his game plan, the ploy is transparent and not something by which India should get taken in. |
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| It might be argued from the viewpoint of realpolitik that the LTTE offer gives India a chance to become a key player in Sri Lanka once again, rather than someone whose support the Sri Lankan government can take for granted. |
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| However, more than a decade of standing on the sidelines while there has been western involvement in the Sri Lankan peace process has done no harm to India, nor does it serve India's interest to play games with Colombo. As the largest country in the region, India has enough trouble dealing with some of its peskier neighbours, and there is no call to upset a friendly one. Indeed, the key lesson from the Sri Lanka accord that Rajiv Gandhi hammered out in 1987 (at the invitation of the then Sri Lankan president, and to the annoyance of Mr Prabhakaran) is that India should not get involved at the behest of either party to a long-running and complex dispute and thereby alienate the second party. |
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| The other factor to be kept in mind is that the LTTE complicates Tamil Nadu's politics, and any softening of stance by New Delhi would pave the way for the organisation to strike root in Indian territory once again. This would be a wholly unwelcome development, given the activities the LTTE was indulging in when it had virtual free rein in the 1980s. In short, confessional statements notwithstanding, the LTTE has not changed in the last 15 years, and there is no reason for India to change its policy with regard to an unreliable and untrustworthy organisation. |
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