The Sri Lanka Accord

Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer

A clearer example of the past projecting into the present and a broader grasp of the dilatory developments vis-a-vis the island's ethnic conflict may be appropriate. Essentially, the escalating ethnic antagonism was due to a scramble for economic opportunities among competing ethnic communities. The Sinhalese constituting 74 per cent of the population. The Tamils including the more exploited Tamils of Indian origin were of the order of around 20 per cent and Muslims seven per cent. The Muslims also speak Tamil. The indigenous Jaffna Tamils had better education and job opportunities under the British and provided the manpower for the colonial administration. After independence, the vastly numerically superior but competitively inferior Sinhalese made Sinhala the official language, Buddhism a preferred religion, and augmentation of educational and economic opportunities for the Sinhalese a national policy.

The Tamils were also victims of ethnically motivated riots since 1958. But, since 1983, discrimination had escalated into suppression and tolerance of Tamils had deteriorated into chauvinist hostility. From the womb of this socio-economic complex of injustices was born the liberation movements of which the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) was the spearhead. It was moderate in its methods, but militancy took over when repression was intensified. Prabhakaran's Tigers claimed Eelam (homeland) of the Tamil-dominated provinces and took over the offensive of mass killing of Sinhalese. The situation worsened with the intrusion of Sinhalese through State-sponsored colonisation schemes calculated to reduce the Tamils to a minority in some regions where they were in a majority.

The aggravation of common tension continued despite IndiraGandhi's efforts to produce a just solution through G. Parthasarathy. President Jayawardene and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi met under the pressure of a deepening crisis, hoping to give a creative turn to the solution of the vexed problem. The cease-fire of June 1985 was a good omen. Further rounds of talks in July and August were marred by further killings. The second cease-fire of 10 October, 1985, did not stop the killings of Tamils. Although Rajiv Gandhi describes the problem as a purely Sri Lankan one, he rightly expressed concern over the mass influx of refugees and the violation of human rights. However, abandoning a political solution to a political problem, Jayawardene sought a military methodology and roped in Pakistan, Britain and Israel in the shape of experts from these countries to wage a mini-war against militant Tamils.

Next came the conference of June 1986 with proposals for provincial councils and other institutions involving devolution of powers. The quantum of devolution was poor and the merger of the north and the east was rejected by the President. So the Tamils fed militarist militancy into their operational pattern. And then in December 1986 came the new proposals with ministers Natwar Singh and P. Chidambaram catalysing the process. The LTTE, dissatisfied with the proposals, persisted in their gory guerilla tactics, but Jayawardene countered this move by full-scale blockading of Jaffna and starving the people, stopping communications and medical supplies, even bombing them. The world was horrified and India, in a sudden outburst of activity, initiated talks leading to the accord.

June-July 1987 saw a frenetic spell in Colombo-Delhi relations, after a fruitless zig-zag of futile palavers and deepening distrust. The Gandhi government, in a hubristic mood of sudden humanitarianism, and acting almost unilaterally, despatched in June to the starving Tamils of blockaded Jaffna, badly needed food and medicine. They were peremptorily sent back by the puny Sri Lankan navy. Hurt by this humiliating rebuff, South Block hit back, ignoring international regulations about trespassing on the air space of sovereign states and air dropping food and medical supplies over the besieged north. Though Colombo protested, its anger was happily obliterated by the welcome announcement of an agreement between the artful Lankan President and the artless Indian prime minister.

29 July 1987, surprisingly witnessed a unique ceremony�two statesmen signed a vague accord of sorts in Colombo. A Jaffna cease-fire, a lovely serendipity indeed, was announced. The bilateral agreement was instantly blessed by President Reagan and praised by various other foreign leaders. So far so good. The gestation and the midwifery of this agreement are a riddle wrapped in mystery; the cumulative meaning of the ambivalent clauses of this hasty document is an arcane enigma; whom it benefits in the short and the long run is, as yet, difficult to decode. The India-Lanka accord must be tested by measuring its clauses, their viability and credibility, against the triple imperatives of Tamil justice and the restoration of people's political processes for Sinhalese and Moors, Burghers and others living in the 'democratic socialist republic of Sri Lanka'

There is a sombre realism in the growing feeling that peace is still a pipe-dream and the promised breakthrough is dwindling into a break-down. Here is a typical sober response to the developments which spell death for Tamil optimism about fulfilment of the agreement. In an interview in The Hindu, Padmanabhan, the secretary-general of the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front, which obeyed the accord and disarmed itself said: 'We are greatly concerned with the problem arising out of armed hostilities between the peace keeping force and the LTTE. It is imperative that the Indian government take all steps to ensure that the civilian casualties and the extreme economic and psychological deprivation of our people is kept to an absolute minimum or avoided altogether.'

Does this acid comment implicate the Indian forces in the consciousness of the Tamil people as guility of military excesses in fighting the LTTE? Armies away from home are not always examples of Newman's definition of a gentleman. Padmanabhan further mourns, 'Although five months have elapsed since the Indo-Sri Lanka accord, the people's expectation that it would pave the way for peace, democracy and devolution of power to the Tamils remains a distant dream. In fact, the present reality that faces our people is one of despair, deprivation and death. The EPRLF, which extended its support to the accord, is now finding it difficult to demonstrate to our people, in concrete and tangible terms, the gains of the accord. What our people see is the process through which only those conditions favourable to the Sri Lanka government are being satisfied.'

All the fanfare and fancy dress about the historic event of 29 July 1987, now boomerang on India because our prime minister failed to discern the fine distinction between haste and speed. And who pays the penalty? Main stream wrote on 14 November: It is good that the prime minister paid tribute to the sacrifices of our jawans and officers who had fallen in the Sri Lanka operations, and then number is not inconsiderable. At the same time, it would be pertinent to ask what was the cause for which our soldiers have given away their lives. Obviously this was not for the defence of the motherland. Nor have we decided to build an empire beyond our borders for which our troops have had to shed their blood. Nor are we fighting to save the world from the evils of communism' as the American GIs were told in Vietnam, nor for the defence of the socialist fatherland as the Soviet soldiers might have been motivated in Afghanistan. What is it for which our jawans are fighting? Is it to keep up the tottering Jayawardene regime? What needs to be questioned is not the role of the Indian armed forces, but the irresponsibility of those at the political level who have ordered our forces to Sri Lanka'.

The corpse of the amnesty clause lies in Sri Lanka, with India looking on, deaf-mute, but continuing its tiger hunt. It looks as if Rajiv Gandhi's only clause in the accord is surrender of arms. Lankan perfidy is beyond his ken or courage. Nor is the liquidation of the blackguardly, blockheaded LTTE the end of the story. The Tigers or a section of them�may be. a malignant manifestation but the militant fight of the last Tamils will persist until basic justice greets them.

There is no Left or Right where people are face to face with liberty or death. Every liberation struggle in the world proves this. While Indian official propaganda yells against the savage deeds of the Tamil Tigers and praises the triumph of the Indian troops against half-baked desperadoes�many trained and equipped in the past in Tamil Nadu�as a victory in the 'great' battle for Jaffna, Jayawardene chuckles, pays tongue-in-cheek compliments, and Sinhalese soldiers sigh with relief that their lives are safe and their weapons unstained with their own countrymen's blood.

Should dialectical acitivists omit to criticise Indian impotence in events that occurred after signing the agreement? Events such as

(a) preventing student Thileepan's fast-unto-death for human rights in prison and eventual death;

(b) the cyanide suicide of 13 Tigers caught and transferred to Colombo to be tortured contrary to the proclaimed amnesty;

(c) the indifference of the Jayawardene government to the fate of thousands of detenues, innocent Tamil and progressive Sinhalese;

(d) the blatant violation .by the JRJ regime through the twin legislative pretences which stultify the agreement in its very essence; and

(e) the murky absurdity of Colombo's claim to be in control of the IPKF which is a slur on our national self-respect and frustrates our country's humane purpose in sacrificing the lives of its jawans. The folly of South Block shall not sink our national resources in quicksand and kill our soldiers in Tiger-infested quagmire.

Rajiv Gandhi brooks no democratic dissent and changes his mind and mood because he has a majority in Parliament and impregnable authority in his party. Inner party or intra-cabinet democracy is a casualty in such a milieu; and the civil services, party echelons and the vast Congress or allied populace enjoy, in Mark Twain's language, 'three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practise either of them'. Lacking that intense empathy with Tamil ethnicity and vaccinated against criticism, the shining profile of our prime minister loses its convincing persuasiveness, despite his bona fides. The Tamils perhaps feel that to pin their faith in the JRJ-Rajiv accord as their sole saviour is giving the wildest hostage to fortune. They have good grounds to be sceptical.

There were high hopes for the accord, even critics of the Left discovering some good in it. Let us dissect the diplomatic agreement with rationalist reverence.

A POST MORTEM

The very process which produced the Indo-Sri Lanka agreement has genetic defects. When political polemics, emerging from ethnic conflicts and resulting in bitter, bleeding operations dividing the republic are to be resolved through peaceful negotiations and constitutional formulations, natural justice and democratic basics require the active involvement of, or, at least, extensive consultations with, real combatant groups. Therefore, the Tamil political leaders and militant organisations ought to have been vital participants in the very process of discussing the terms. Exparte decisions don't hind. The militants were fragmented and fighting.

The TULF was largely ineffective in a violent climate, though it was a material factor with representative electoral credentials and intellectuals. But the pact was made de facto behind the back of the Tamil surrogates. Whatever Delhi may assert, no militant leader, nor the moderate TULF, had an effective voice. The agreement about the future of the Tamils was.thus reached by Delhi and Colombo, the parties actually affected being merely informed of the fait accompli and directed to say amen.

INSTANT ACCORD

The process was unjust because Rajiv Gandhi, in his arrogation of paramountcy over the Tamils, whom he helped with arms and training to hit back against Sinhalese violence, acted as the principal and unaccountable plenipotentiary. The TULF's top cadre was formally informed and, though they had reservations, they muted their dissent. The militants were nowhere in the picture. Prabhakaran, the head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, an intelligent intransigent with a fascist following, was confronted with an accord which he was given no option to amend. He seemed to assent under coercion, as he explained in Jaffna soon after. The Sinhalese also had no opportunity. President Jayawardene too behaved smartly by not consulting anyone. In fact, even his ministers, his party, the progressive elements and other parties learnt of the accord rather than shaped it. The twilight of democracy produces the cult of personality. But the products, like the instant accords, meet with rough weather when they set sail. These fatal procedural drawbacks notwithstanding, the accord is now a reality. It has to be analysed, amended or undone in the light of developments which furnish the best commentary on the covenant and its potential for good or evil. Now to the agreement.

The Preambular part of the India-Sri Lanka accord signed by the tallest executives of the two governments runs on realistic and sublime lines, attaching great importance to strengthening the traditional friendship between the two countries and accepting the urgency and imperative necessity of resolving the ethnic problem of Sri Lanka. There is a frank statement that the violence is consequent on the ethnic hostility and that the developmental destiny of all the Lankan communities depends on the resolution of the ethnic hostility. If only this realisation were more than skin deep, if only the political forces grant this goal as the foundation of Indo-Lankan relations, if only an all-out effort by Sri Lanka, ably aided by India, were made on a national scale, it would fulfil the twin aspirations of the Tamils, of the fusion of the northern and eastern provinces and self-government for the minority, of course, within the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the island republic.

HISTORIC HOMELAND

There is a further refreshingly frank admission that the Tamil community has a distinct cultural and linguistic identity which needs to be carefully nurtured. This is followed by a critical confession (if one may be pardoned for saying so) that the northern and the eastern provinces have been the historic home of the Tamil speaking peoples who have, throughout in the past, lived together in this territory, with other ethnic groups. Not stopping with these important truisms, the agreement conscientises the nationalist forces into a mood of strengthening the island's unity through its character as a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious pluralist polity, with every group having the right to live in equality, safety and harmony so that they may prosper and fulfil their aspirations.

Such is the corner-stone of the compact which may be regarded as historic if only the values so enshrined were taken seriously and implemented in the spirit of equal communal justice and minority aspirations on a democratic basis.

NOT PARTY BHAKTAS BUT DO OR DIE COMBATANTS

One spinal flaw in the crystallisation of the pact is the omission to involve actively the Tamil political militants and senior statesmen through a trilateral discussion. Whatever the Indian prime minister or his official ventriloquists may assert, the Lankan Tamil participation in the processing of the proposals was next to nothing. Rajiv Gandhi took them for granted, assuming that their struggle would start or stop at India's command and without arms and training from India, Tamil resistance would wither away. What a moronic misjudgement of a heroic movement! They are not party bhaktas but 'do or die' combatants, with burning self-respect and a vial of killer cyanide as the final sacrifice. The faculty to penetrate the soul of a people in revolt against being crushed out of ethnic existence belongs to statesmen with a vision of the future, not those intoxicated with self-importance.

SPIN-OFF BENEFITS

Be that as it may, let us see if something good can be salvaged out of the accord. A few fundamental gains deserve to be highlighted as the spin-off benefits from the accord. First, linguistic justice is done to the Tamil and English official languages of Sri Lanka. Second, in t land of perpetual emergency and where both Tamil and Sinhalese languish in detention the Sri Lanka President, runs the accord, will grant a general amnesty to political and other prisoners now held in custody under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and other Emergency laws. The amnesty also extends to combatants, as well as to those persons accused, charged or convicted under these laws. The Government of Sri Lanka will make special efforts to rehabilitate the militant youth with a view to bringing them back into the mainstream of national life. India will cooperate in the process.

Sweet words but brazen baloney, because no one has bothered about those prisoners still behind bars. Even so, as an undertaking, such generosity towards human rights deserves hearty approbation, if it is honestly implemented.

Third, there is a clear understanding that residual issues of importance, not finalised in the earlier negotiations, shall be resolved between India and Sri Lanka within a period of six weeks of signing the agreement. There is a sly rider here which says that these proposals are also conditional to the Government of India cooperating directly with the Government of Sri Lanka in their implementation.

While India agrees to prevent militant troops operating in Sri Lanka from using Indian territory as their base, the Lankan government also agrees that nothing prejudicial to India will take place by Sri Lanka being used by foreign interests to the prejudice of Indian security.

There is a promise of polls in three months, in any event, before 31 December 1987, with Indian observers to watch over the elections to the provincial -councils of the north and east. Likewise, there is a provision for a common administrative unit for the northern and eastern provinces with a tricky condition that while the two provinces joins together with one administrative unit, one elected provincial council, one government, one chief minister and one board of ministers, there will be a referendum on or before 31 December 1988, to enable the people of the eastern province to decide whether they would like to be governed together or remain separated as distinct provinces. The President is given, at his discretion, the power to postpone a referendum in this behalf.

Finally, there is an obscure conditionality fraught with interpretive riddles written into accord. Clause 2.15 runs: These proposals are conditional to an acceptance of the proposals negotiated from 4.5.86 to 19.12.86. Residual matters not finalised during the above negotiations shall be resolved between India and Sri Lanka within a period of six weeks of signing this agreement. These proposals are also conditional to the Government of India co-operating directly with the Government of Sri Lanka in their implementation.

By way of a democratic reinforcement of the accord, there is a clause which assures the people that Sri Lanka will ensure free, full and fair participation of voters from all communities in the northern and eastern provinces in electoral processes envisaged in this agreement. The Government of India will extend full co-operation to the Sri Lanka government in this regard.

JUSTICE TO TAMILS

With the tragic exit of Tamil Nadu chief minister M.G. Ramachandran and the mounting deaths of Sri Lankan civilians and Indian jawans, infantile calculations may be problematic. After all, people are unpredictable and react with more uncanny political sanity than the pro tern tenants of Janadhipathi Mandiraya or Race Course Road, wish.

All right-thinking persons in our two countries will want that justice be done to the Tamils, that we on both sides of the Palk Strait live in happy amity and peace, that the accord be made an instrument to advance this consummation. But will it work? A closer look at the documents of 29 July will do good

CONCLUSIONS

There are five fundamentals in the accord: The formation of a single administrative unit telescoping the north and the east and setting up of the apparatus of a ministry in that behalf during the interim period between the elections to the provincial council and the referendum for determination of the will of the people of the eastern province to separate or live united with the north (Clause (1) (2)�not implemented). The election to the provincial council is agreed to be held within the next three months (i.e. before the end of October) and in any event before 31 December 1987 (not implemented).

No free and fair election can be held if the Emergency is not lifted, and so there is a condition to lift the Emergency in the eastern and northern provinces by 15 August 1987 (not implemented). A prelude to peace is the cessation of hostilities and that condition is to come into effect all over the island within 48 hours of signing the agreement. The surrender of arms and the confinement of the Sri Lankan security personnel also have a time-bound provision: the process is to be completed within 72 hours of the cessation of hostilities coming into effect. All but the LTTE have surrendered and now repent the step as Pathmanabhan of the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) has stated.

It is too obvious to need argument that unless there is a general amnesty the hostiles cannot come into the open nor can normalcy be restored. Rightly, therefore, clause 10 of the agreement provides that the President of Sri Lanka will grant a general amnesty to political and other prisoners now held in custody under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and other Emergency laws, and to combatants as well as those persons accused, charged and/or convicted under these laws (not implemented, except as a first instalment gimmick). Many Sinhalese progressives who support the accord languish in jail still. Many LTTE extremists rot in prison or carry huge sums on their heads.

These clauses form a package and stand or fall together. You cannot ask for surrender of arms, inflicting lethal disablement on the resistance movement which has gathered momentum, but do nothing to enforce the imperative undertakings of Sri Lanka's President. The Indian prime minister, obsessed with his (illusory) authority over the Tamil militants, talks all the time of surrender

of arms as the essence of the accord. The soul of the agreement is to hold elections, to lift the Emergency, to grant amnesty and to begin the formation of a joint province. A priority item is the quantum and quality of devolution of powers, so that the reality of autonomy may be brought home constitutionally to the minority consciousness.

There is a pledge in Clause 14 that these matters will be resolved between India and Sri Lanka within a period of six weeks of signing the agreement, that is, before the middle of September 1987. This has certainly not been carried out. Clearly, there is an implication that all these matters of legislation and constitutional amendment bearing on political normalisation, provincial election and power devolution will be discussed with India and also with the concerned parties, that is, the political organisations, militant or other, in the island. This has not been done.

A monitoring body to review the progress of the implementation is provided for, so that failures on both sides may be exposed and complaints in that behalf heard. No such functional watch-dog has yet been created.

There is a provision in the new treaty for repatriation of Indian citizens from Sri Lanka, concurrently with the repatriation of Sri Lankan refugees from Tamil Nadu [Article 2-16(d)1. Here again there is victimisation of these unfortunates lingering in Sri Lanka in large numbers. There is no realism in the exchange of populations.

While it is difficult to quantify the cost of the military operations in Sri Lanka, the finance ministry, it is said, estimates it to be around Rs. 300 crores and over Rs. 5 crores a day. Other estimates placed the amount much higher, which means that the Indian taxpayer is being burdened beyond his ability. Besides, our soldiers. are being killed or injured in foreign fields.

In contrast, the Sri Lankan economy now looks relaxed and its budget for 1988 shows a great reduction in defence expenditure, of course, at India's expense. This is made further clear by the Sri Lankan President's disclosure that because of the accord Sri Lanka has saved much of its war expenditure and raised the salaries of its employees with such savings. PTI reports (21 Dec. 1987) Jayawardene as saying, "If not tor the IPKF we would have to fight this war. We have to spend more than what we are spending for the salary increase."

Our cost is not merely in war expenditure but in war casualties. The Sri Lankan President claimed that while Sri Lankan soldiers died in large numbers before the IPKF took over, after the latter's arrival not a single Sri Lankan soldier had died. Our men died instead.

Both the Sri Lankan President and his Parliament must give to India his authority, agreeing that pro tanto Sri Lanka would have parted with sovereignty or final control vis-a-vis the India forces and their operations. A very clear statement on this point is needed. now, if the Tamil people are to feel assured that the Indian army will not desert them but will stand by them until north and east come under one administrative umbrella, and devolution of powers on a par with that enjoyed by an Indian State becomes an accomplished fact. Of course, IPKF excesses, if continued, may make them a hated horde and their withdrawal may well be the demand, first simmering, then boiling and finally bursting. Today Tamil blood tells a gory story. This is a serious caveat.

Limitation on sovereignty for specific purposes and under covenants is nothing new in this integrated world of ours. The European community, with the European Court, European economic policies etc. may be construed as an infraction of the sovereignty of Britain or other member nations. All international covenants involve erosion of some part of sovereignty. In the present case, our men have laid down their lives, our scarce resources have been showered for the benefit of Sri Lanka's citizens and the two republics have taken various measures on the faith of each other's representations. In this view the Indian forces, it must be made unmistakably clear, are there in Sri Lanka in an independent capacity and conditioned by the fulfilment of a task. If this is not acceptable, we should withdraw the army, leaving the Sri Lankans to themselves.

The military misfortune of the 30,000 Indian troops rushed to Jaffna but unprepared for the novel urban guerilla operations, and without sufficient military intelligence about the adversary, was the result of a prime minister's hubris�not a crime but a bad blunder. He has let down the army and, unwittingly, lowered its international reputation. The insensitivity to escalating criticism of this adolescent delinquency can lead to more deafness and egregiousness. But more casualties, more cries from Jaffna and Batticaloa, may trigger a pathological process of hostility at home. And the reckless LTTE, like a bear at hay, may seek and secure military hardware from unscrupulous agents keen to embarrass India such as Pakistan and Israel and the satanic CIA.

The question then is, are we the friends of the beleaguered Tamils or the rescue auxiliaries of a reeling President guilty of near-genocide? Let the Sri Lankans share the casualties. We, Indians, as our sons die in vain in Sri Lanka, are actually the victims of JRJ's newspeak with which the July agreement abounds. Either we command the militants into a cease-fire and pari passu pressurize Janadhipathi Mandiraya into the fusion-devolution pledge or leave both parties to shape their own destinies. Why play the macabre military mukhtiar of Sinhalese Jayawardene and yet boast that the accord, as a whole, would be executed?

Two make-believe bills were introduced and passed in Parliament with a small amendment caused by the Supreme Court decision requiring a referendum. Without going into the details of the legislative exercise at this stage, one may confidently assert that they fall far short of the aspirations of the Tamils. Indeed, there is no legislative sanction yet for bringing the north and east under one umbrella. This is relegated to a later presidential direction. It is all a game of hide-and-seek. Why is it that a straightforward legislation by constitutional provision is avoided in bunching together the two provinces making up the homeland of the Tamils? Premadasa, the prime minister, clearly stated that he was against it. The President is too. Do we not have sufficient omens to suggest that the legislative process in Sri Lanka will defeat this foremost objective of the Sri Lankan Tamils?

The second imperative is about the devolution of powers. What is given is a husk, not the kernel. No effective powers regarding land and other important items covered by the State List in India are distributed under the Sri Lankan bill. More fraudulent is the dubious negation of autonomy. Powers are given to the governor to be exercised at his discretion and the hand which pulls the strings is that of the President.

Thus, instead of State autonomy, what is granted is an illusory triarchy. More than all this, the President and Parliament retain their plenary powers which can effectively nullify State legislation and action. A close scrutiny of the devolution scheme brings out the ugly fact that what is created is a talking shop with formal authority precariously dependent on the governor, the President and Parliament. Hanging over it is the Damocles sword of the Emergency which can extinguish even what little autonomy there is. Can one find fault with the militants for refusing to be cheated? In fact, the TULF leaders had informed Rajiv Gandhi that the two bills were unacceptable and it was impossible for them to sell the scheme to the Sri Lankan Tamils.

The referendum, what with Sinhalese colonisation subtly engineered by Colombo, the terror the brutal LTTE has generatedand the alienation of the Muslims tormented by the politics of religious minorityism, may well be a clever ploy to dismantle the united province. The myth is that the militants alone resist the agreement; the truth is that Sri Lanka's President and Parliament have already mutilated its anatomy.

The Indian prime minister, with no answer for these accusations, now uses a 'cover-up' of 'firm assurances' by the President to reconsider the hills atter they are passed. It needs credulity beyond breaking point to believe a President who by-passed India before the bills were formulated, asserted before the Sri Lankan Parliament through his prime minister that the common province would never come, and diluted constitutional autonomy to a shadow.

And the major Opposition�the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), 34 other political organisations, the Buddhist clergy and that murderously extremist Sinhalese group the Janata Vimukti Peramuna are opposed to the Tamil minimum. Only the left, a sensible but negligible political factor, supports effective decentralisation of power and minority authority for Tamil-dominant Jaffna and the eastern sector. Even they do not expose the spinal weaknesses of the accord.

Another pathetic feature about Jayawardene, the United National Party and their tardy and ambivalent manoeuvres about the accord is the anxiety to preserve the Sinhalese status quo because Parliament's term expires in 1989 and the President's in 1988 itself. The strategy is, to drag on till then without radical Tamil justice and use the Indian army to kill the truculent LTTE, boasting that not a single Sinhalese soldier has been killed!

Against this background, the Indian establishment's obsessive military dream of killing off the LTTE desperadoes as the only issue is cowardly folly. When more and more Indians die in Sri Lanka�and no defence of the motherland is involved�more and more Indians will demand why? How far will this go? What will be the gains, what the cost and how will it be justified? The ink of history is a string of interrogatories. Our prime minister's attitude vis-a-vis the Tamils of Sri- Lanka, is a blend of oversized ego, under-estimation of others' intelligence plus a wish to achieve instantly high objectives without hard thinking or ideological moorings.

My purpose is to promote a stable solution to the vexed problem of ethnic justice in Sri Lanka and friendly relations between India and Sri Lanka. Whatever the shortcomings in the processes and performance, I must appreciate the creative foreign policy factor implicit in the consummation of an accord between our two countries.

We must adopt dynamic thought to salvage the purposes of the accord and seek methods by which we may strengthen Indo-Sri Lankan friendship and Tamil-Sinhalese relations.

Once we accept the imperative of democracy, that authority cannot he divorced from accountabilty, our prime minister must answer for the full-scale military operations, including naval and aerial patrols, the diminishing chances of peace and the escalating involvement in war, which has resulted in increasing Indian casualties and the fratricidal Tamil death toll.

The unkindest cut of all is the Sri Lankan ministers virtually dismantling the accord and demanding Pakistani military presence and elections in the current hysterical atmosphere, thereby dealing a death blow to the pact and laying a death trap for our jawans. If by some freak of friction Pakistani forces enter the south and the Indian forces control the north, a conflict between the two may not be a recondite possibility.

The war continues; peace eludes us. The kismet of the accord becomes curiouser and curiouser. Its eventual Indian impact is sure to be a time bomb.

I plead with the prime minister to review the deteriorating situation and boldly speak to his counterparts in power in Sri Lanka to innovate a creative formula which will work without violence and will involve the militants, Tamil and Sinhalese, in the process.

A new confidence has to be created which can never happen so long as the Indian guns use their fire power and continue curfew indefinitely as they do now. Nor is it the business of the Indian forces to make house-to-house searches, shoot anyone with a weapon, and incidentally commit those delinquencies which are associated with occupation armies. To keep the peace is a more innocuous operation than engaging on a man-hunt for the Tigers. A great effort must he made to win over the Tigers and the JVP into the mainstream of democracy on an ideological basis and to assure that the rights of every Sri Lankan citizen will be guaranteed.

If the India-Sri Lanka agreement is alive, a functional audit is badly needed so that changes may be wrought to make it fulfil its preamble. If the accord is all but dead, an autopsy must be done to understand why it never took off, except for massacres on both sides.