The murder of Sri Lanka’s foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, is a reminder that the island nation is yet to emerge from the spiral of violence that had it in its grip, these past two decades and more. The pause in hostilities that came in the wake of the peace process had always appeared a tentative one, more so since April 2003 when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) indicated that it had “temporarily suspended” participation in peace talks with the Sri Lankan government. But Kadirgarmar’s assassination is clearly the most serious threat to the ceasefire thus far.The LTTE, on its part, has denied involvement in the assassination. But its denials carry little credibility given the fact that it has in recent years preferred not to own up to several acts of violence that bear its footprint, including last July’s suicide attack on a Colombo police station that killed four police officers. With the LTTE already on the terrorist lists of five countries — something that Kadirgamar is believed to have helped achieve through his powers of persuasion — the outfit would not wish to draw further attention to itself, and understandably so.But the question that has cast a shadow over the island is this: will the ceasefire survive this assassination? The odds are stacked against its sustainability although President Chandrika Kumaratunga well knows that incidents like the latest killing are designed to ensure precisely such an outcome. The fact is that the peace process — brokered by Norway — has hit a roadblock. What the LTTE wants is political autonomy for eight Tamil majority districts of the northeast, which is to be followed by the right to self-determination established through a possible plebiscite. The Sri Lankan government, on its part, has demonstrated no enthusiasm for this formula. The longer this impasse continues, the stronger appear prospects of a breakdown. The latest act of violence in Colombo portends troubled times.
