Sri Lankan government officials and leaders of the Tamil Tiger rebels meet this week at a Swiss chateau outside Geneva to try to patch up their unraveling cease-fire, which brought three years of relative calm and the benefits of peace after decades of war. Last year, in Colombo, Sri Lankans were still growing accustomed to life without police checkpoints and the threat of suicide bombs. On the northern coast, fishermen had returned to once-forbidden seas. Roads blocked by war were again open to traffic. After three years of relief, the ceasefire with the LTTE began to unravel. The government and the rebels will try to patch up the 2002 truce and stop the island from slipping back to war.Their objectives are limited. political solutions which for decades have eluded the minority Tamils, concentrated in the country’s north and east, and the Sinhalese majority in the south are still too remote to discuss.The best to be hoped for, analysts say, is restored calm, possibly with an agreement to meet again to revive the peace process at a later date. “The most likely outcome in Geneva is not going to be war or peace, but another in-between option,” said Bart Klem, the co-author of a World Bank-funded report released last month, adding “aid, conflict and peacebuilding in Sri Lanka.”The Tamil rebels say they will insist the Sri Lankan army disarm and neutralise a Tamil faction which broke away from the main rebel group in 2004 led by a former Tiger commander called Karuna. The Tigers accuse the government of using Karuna to fight a proxy war in the contentious east, but Colombo denies it has anything to do with him. For its part, the government will seek a rebel guarantee to halt the violence that claimed 150 lives since December, including 81 soldiers and sailors. It is also expected to demand an end to the forced recruitment of children into the guerrilla ranks. The Tigers deny responsibility for the attacks or abducting children, but Norwegian-led truce monitors confirm 1,794 child soldiers were recruited from 2002 up to December 31.Both sides may also discuss strengthening the mandate of the 60-person Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission, created under the cease-fire agreement. The monitors “need to be given the power to go beyond merely jotting down incidents. These are matters they should talk about,” said Mangala Moonesinghe, a veteran Sri Lanka diplomat who now advises a civil rights organisation in Colombo. Though each side staked out tough positions before the meet, they also signaled good will by releasing prisoners. On Saturday, the LTTE freed a policeman held captive for five months, a day after the government released four members of the Sea Tigers, the LTTE’s naval wing, who had been arrested in October. —AP
