Backfiring trickery

THE multifarious wiles the LTTE is capable of have been exposed, once again, through its reported orchestration of the abduction of some Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation personnel in the Eastern Province, a couple of months ago.

Our lead story yesterday, drawing heavily on a report by the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), deals in detailed fashion with the abduction drama and the motives of the Tigers.

The UTHR (J), incidentally, which plays a human rights watchdog role in the North-East, has proved a highly authentic source of information over the years on LTTE atrocities and has doughtily braved LTTE efforts at silencing it.

If not for the forthrightness and courage of this organisation, the repression suffered by the North-East people would have gone unexposed.

Getting back to the main contents of the report, we now know that the abduction of the TRO personnel was carried out by the Tigers in the run-up to round one of the Geneva talks with the aim of focusing the attention of international opinion on what is called the paramilitaries issue.

The abduction was projected as the work of the paramilitaries in the North-East. The Security Forces were also shown as having connived with the paramilitaries in the abduction.

So, the fake drama had the dual objective of showing the paramilitaries in a tyrannical light while also discrediting the Armed Forces.

Here then, is further proof of the deviousness of the LTTE. The world community would do well to take full cognizance of it because it would give the world an idea of the sizeable obstacles that remain to be surmounted on the road to peace. Besides, we have here proof of how bogus the so-called paramilitary threat really is.

This point is of considerable importance because the LTTE has continuously highlighted the presence of the paramilitaries as a distinct obstruction to the launching and speeding-up of the Government-LTTE negotiatory process.

The UTHR (J) report establishes that the paramilitaries issue could very well be blown out of proportion for the purpose of delaying the peace effort.

Therefore, we hope our foreign backers, including the Tokyo donor conference Co-Chairs, would be alert to these issues which are standing in the way of relaunching substantive negotiations.

We hope the UTHR (J) expose would strengthen the resolve of the world community to bring pressure on the Tigers for hastening the peace process.

Such pressure is important in view of the delaying tactics of the Tigers and as the Secretary General of the Government Peace Secretariat Dr. Palitha Kohona has pointed out, the peace process cannot be held hostage to LTTE fixations about paramilitaries.

Is not this the moment the LTTE has been waiting for? The State is making it amply clear that it is eager to make the transition from ceasefire talks to negotiations on substantive issues.

After all, it is these substantive issues which have the closest bearing on Tamil grievances and peace. If it is sincere, the LTTE would help in making this transition.