The reasons why the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) suspended peace talks with the Sri Lankan government on 21 April were the focus of a late April meeting between LTTE political head SP Tamilchelvan and civil society representatives from the north and south of the country. The meeting, in the northern town of Kilinochchi, was arranged by the Association of War Affected Women, which has been lobbying for information concerning the fate of missing-in-action service personnel. The meeting transpired in the air-conditioned political headquarters of the LTTE around a long conference table no different from those found in ministerial offices in Colombo.
At the meeting, Tamilchelvan took pains to emphasise that the LTTE's decision to suspend the peace talks was neither a withdrawal from the peace process nor a hastily implemented action. According to him, the exclusion of the LTTE from a recent international donor meeting in Washington attended by the Sri Lankan government was only one among several reasons that had prompted the LTTE's move. The primary motivating factor, he said, was the absence of significant progress in alleviating the hardships of the people caused by the war.
This view is in contrast to the general belief that the LTTE's decision was motivated only by disappointment at being excluded from the Washington aid conference held 14-15 April. Indeed, the LTTE may have been hoping that by honouring the ceasefire agreement for 14 months it deserved a place at that conference. Colombo has been a successful fundraiser of late, securing USD 800 million in support from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The LTTE's exclusion from the Washington meeting has demonstrated that the path to international legitimacy in a US-dominated world in which terrorism is anathema is going to be a difficult task.
With its refusal as yet to renounce violence, as the Irish Republican Army has in Northern Ireland, and its continuing practices of targeted assassinations of Tamil political opponents and child recruitment, the LTTE was destined to fail the US test. But the LTTE's position is not irredeemable, and there is much that it and the government can do together in partnership to ensure that the LTTE gains the legitimacy it seeks.