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The Lanka Sama Samaja Party has closely studied Dr. Anton Balasingham's letter to the Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgesan conveying to him what can be gathered as the LTTE leadership's condition for participating in the next Donor Conference scheduled to be held in Japan next month.

Balasingham's letter does contain certain misgivings in regard to the utilization of rehabilitation funds as could be immediately and favourably addressed. Its proposal for the setting up of a NE Interim Administration is however not politically realistic so long as the LTTE remains an organization with armed cadre that is free to go into characteristically terrorist activity whenever it is inclined to do so. Shooting opponents and ear-marked men at will and abduction of persons and the extortion of money are all part of terrorist activity though perhaps of low key.

The LSSP gathers from Balasingham's letter that the Sri Lanka Government's offer is to set up infrastructure area-wise for the utilization of rehabilitation aid with effective participation of the LTTE. The LSSP is of the view that there should be space for other political parties too to participate in such matters as these. Duly set up local government organizations are the means through which the rest of civil society too can make an adequate political contribution.

The LSSP has at all times had its reservations on the internationalization of our ethnic issue. But since the 1980s up to the preset time, successive governments have involved themselves in the mobilization of international aid and assistance on this matter. Such mobilisation should however not be the deciding factor on political issues that relate to the problem. Such issues should be dealt with free of international financial pressure and should be viewed wholly in the context of ground level political reality.

The LSSP does not see that either the government or the main parliamentary opposition has understood the political strategy of the LTTE in getting up such demands as an interim administration for the Northeast. It cannot be said that the LTTE is unaware of such demand being resisted by the Sinhala and Muslim communities. This is a demand addressed to the international community with its views on 'internal self determination'.

Failure to accede to allowing to an ethnic community the degree of autonomy inherent in the concept of internal self determination would in the eyes of the international community, especially of the west, justify the further, and what may be considered as the inevitable step of separation.

This strategy of the LTTE, in the view of the LSSP, can be adequately met only by a counter strategy that brings the major parliamentary parties together on the devolution of political power which both as concept and political process or exercise is wide enough to include comprehensive political autonomy within a united Sri Lanka.

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