The assassination of Sri Lanka's foreign minister threatens the fragile truce between the government and Tamil separatists, writes Gamal Nkrumah Last Friday's assassination of Lakshman Kadirgamar, Sri Lanka's foreign minister, delivered yet another blow to the shaky Sri Lankan peace process. Kadirgamar was shot by snipers as he stepped out of the pool of his villa in Colombo Five, the upmarket district at the heart of the Sri Lankan capital. Though the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) denied responsibility for the murder their ties with the Sri Lankan government have once again been sundered. Without a minimum of consensus the Sri Lankan peace process does not stand a chance. Yet embroiled in ethnic tensions, the island-nation cannot afford to abandon the peace talks between the government and the LTTE, which recently entered their seventh round. Nor can the Sri Lankan government, whatever suspicions it might have as to who was behind the murder of Kadirgamar, permit a violent backlash to his untimely demise. To do so would serve only to radicalise yet another generation, destabilising the country for years to come. The Sri Lankan peace process had already made much headway, mostly unnoticed by the international community. Change has been real, albeit slow, and Kadirgamar was instrumental in pushing it forward. Kadirgamar's determination to bring an end to a conflict that since 1972 has claimed an estimated 60,000 lives, combined with his dislike of convention, did little to endear him to his enemies. He fought them with new ideas and old certainties, and the Sri Lankan government is unlikely to find him easy to replace. Kadirgamar was atypical, a world away from the stereotype of the self-effacing Sri Lankan politician. He campaigned relentlessly against the LTTE's conscription of children, and spearheaded the campaign to have the LTTE ostracised abroad. The Oxford-educated Kadirgamar, an ethnic Tamil, abhorred ethnic- based politics and was branded a traitor by LTTE supporters. His vision of Sri Lanka was of a united island-nation, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious. He knew that Sri Lanka's long- term stability required the building of a state broad enough to encompass not only the majority Sinhalese but the Tamil and Muslim communities that comprise a sizeable minority of the island's 25 million people. Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who lost an eye to a suspected Tamil bomb in 1999, paid tribute to Kadirgamar's courage and determination to stamp out hatred and ethnic tensions. "I will redouble my efforts and the commitment of my government to the devolution of power through dialogue," Kumaratunga stressed, underlining the need to allow regions greater autonomy in running their own affairs. "The assassination of Foreign Minister Kadirgamar was a barbaric act of terrorism against an unarmed civilian," she said. Kumaratunga described Kadirgamar as an "ardent promoter of ethnic harmony and a negotiated settlement of the conflict... he played a crucial role in assisting me to create the conditions that persuaded the LTTE to come to the negotiating table". She pointed a finger at LTTE saying the "extremist forces who oppose even minimal concessions towards peace must know they are responsible for the perpetuation of the terrorist cause, as the LTTE is responsible for generating it". The loss of Kadirgamar was, she said, a serious blow to her government and he would have to be replaced by an equally talented Tamil who supports the government's position. "His brutal murder creates a vacuum that could be well nigh impossible to fill." Sri Lanka has suffered from a long record of violence and counter-violence. The vast majority of the war-weary population yearns for an end to the cycle of violence. A bomb attack killed Sri Lankan president Ranasinghbe Premadasa on May Day in 1993. "We can't allow terror and hatred to overcome us. As long as the ethnic problem remains unresolved, violence and terror will always be with us," she continued. A permanent solution to the "ethnic problem" is unlikely to come anytime soon, and Kadirgamar's assassination will probably not be the last before peace settles on the island-nation. Across the Indian Ocean, on Indonesia's largest island Sumatra, where the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) is seeking to establish an independent state in the island's oil- rich north, a similar crisis brews. For the time being at least it appears to have been contained by a peace agreement signed between the Indonesian government, represented by Justice and Human Rights Minister Hamid Awaluddin, and GAM leader Malik Mahmoud. The deal signed, in the Finnish capital on Monday, is widely seen as a fresh start. The Sri Lankan government, perhaps hoping for a similar agreement, is attempting to hold onto peace in spite of Kadirgamar's assassination. "We'd like to maintain the status quo of the ceasefire agreement," Sri Lanka's Ambassador to Egypt Wijesiri Hettiarachchi told Al-Ahram Weekly. But the assassination of Kadirgamar, Hettiarachchi added, "had all the hallmarks of the LTTE". Sri Lanka's papers concurred. "Acting on criminal instincts is the way of the LTTE while the government always needs to be guided by the national interest," read an editorial of Sri Lanka's English-language Daily News. "Moreover, the state knows that a return to war will not serve any useful purpose," the paper added. "The impression should never be created that the search for a just peace is being downgraded." The LTTE disagreed. "Colombo, ridden with internal rifts and power struggles, should look inwards for the culprits," was the message posted on an LTTE Internet website. President Kumaratunga formally asked Norway to help bring the LTTE to the negotiating table in January 2000, shortly after she lost her left eye. The Oslo-brokered truce between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE came into effect on 23 February 2002, though Norwegian- sponsored peace talks have remained suspended since April 2003. Small wonder then that the Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Petersen attended Monday's state funeral for Kadirgamar in Colombo.
