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The LTTE has joined those who are mourning the demise of the CFA. Lashing out at the government for the abrogation of the CFA, the outfit has offered to continue with it, as we reported yesterday. The perturbation of the LTTE is natural. The government has done away with something that used to grant Prabhakaran’s wishes. The CFA was blatantly biased towards the LTTE in all respects and put the State in a straitjacket. Most of all, it helped the outfit claim parity of status vis-à-vis the Sri Lankan state and enabled the pro-LTTE Norwegians to gain a foothold in this country and then expand their operations to the present level. Prabhakaran violated the CFA umpteen times but he was smart enough not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Thus, the government’s decision to kill the goose finally. And Prabhakaran is left with no more golden eggs! He has no one to blame but himself for what has happened.

The CFA was a source of legitimacy for the LTTE and justification for the direct Norwegian involvement in the so-called conflict resolution process here. Prabhakaran was banking on the Norwegians to create conditions for the recognition of a line of control on the basis of the CFA and pave the way for UN involvement. But, he made the mistake of pressing his luck too much.

The LTTE has said in a statement we carried yesterday that ‘even at this juncture it is ready to implement every clause of the CFA agreement and respect it 100%’. This shows how desperate the Tigers are to bring its precious CFA goose back to life. Had it respected the truce from the very beginning without smuggling in arms, carrying out assassinations, killing security forces personnel etc., it would have been able to avoid regret. According to a notice the FBI has posted on its website, the LTTE has murdered some 4,000 people during the past two years alone! Now it is too late. The CFA has crossed the great divide.

The LTTE says it ‘did not take any decision to withdraw from the CFA even when the GoSL assassinated the leader of the LTTE peace delegation S. P. Tamilselvan in Nov. 2007’. Has it forgotten that the government took even the killing of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar lying down without abrogating the CFA? The attempts to assassinate the Army Commander and the Defence Secretary, the killing of nearly one hundred unarmed naval personnel and the claymore mine attacks that took the lives of hundreds of troops and civilians didn’t provoke the government into withdrawing from the CFA.

The GoSL, the LTTE says, ‘began undertaking large scale military offensives creating immense human misery…’ It was Prabhakaran who paved the way for those operations by capturing the Mavil Aru anicut, which snowballed into the present phase of war. It proved to be a huge military blunder on the part of Prabhakaran. The Mavil Aru battle exposed his real strength and dispelled the fears that the government may have had of his military capability. Ever since, Prabhakaran has been on the run.

Giving reasons for its decision to unilaterally suspend peace talks, the LTTE says the (UNF) government failed to set up an Internal Self Governing Authority (ISGA). The LTTE made this demand knowing fully well that the government couldn’t meet it. The ISGA, if implemented, would have been a halfway house between federation and separation. The government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe may be faulted for anything but trying to scuttle the peace process, which was its raison d’etre. Its pusillanimity knew no bounds. Even such a timid regime couldn’t accede to the LTTE’s demand. The UNF was right in refusing to set up an ISGA. Even the international community frowned on that demand as being unreasonable. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and EU Commissioner Chris Patten said the LTTE proposals ‘far exceed the Oslo Accord and does not resemble any kind of known federalism’.

How on earth could there be an ‘interim’ solution before a final solution is reached? An interim arrangement is always between the agreement to a solution and its actual implementation. The LTTE was proposing that the cart be put before the horse. Had the UNF government fallen for the Tigers’ wiles, it would have had to use the ISGA as the starting point in negotiating a settlement thus making it binding on the part of future governments as well. The LTTE laments over the scuttling of the P-TOMS which President Kumaratunga offered. The country was lucky that it was shot down. Else, Sri Lanka would have become the first sovereign state to share aid with a terrorist organisation proscribed by the key members of the international community! P-TOMS pales into insignificance in comparison to President Kumaratunga’s Regional Councils aimed at resolving the conflict through devolution at the regional level. Why did the LTTE reject her devolution package in 2000 even before it was torpedoed by the UNP-JVP combine in Parliament? It has never been amenable to a political solution. That’s why the European Parliament has condemned ‘the intransigence of the LTTE leadership over the years, which has successively rejected so many possible ways forward, including devolution at the provincial level or Provincial Councils; devolution at the regional level or Regional Councils as well as the concept of a federation with devolution at the national level’.

The LTTE’s promise to continue with the CFA is obviously for the consumption of the international community to project itself as a peace-loving organisation. But, its trick is sure to fail as the world knows it is Prabhakaran who plunged the country back into war. He promised war in his heroes’ day speech in 2005 within days of President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s election. He said he would resume war the following year. And he did!

He sowed the wind and is reaping the whirlwind.

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