Tamil Tiger chief negotiator Anton Balasingham said
a joint statement after a round of talks with the Colombo government in December
2002 had been misunderstood and misinterpreted as the Tigers abandoning the
right to break away.
"The Liberation Tigers' decision to explore federalism ... does not entail an
unconditional abandonment of the Tamils' right to external self-determination
and secession," he said on Wednesday.
Balasingham's remarks, taken from his yet unpublished new book "War and
Peace" and reproduced on the pro-rebel website Tamilnet, came as Sri Lanka's
peace broker Norway and main financial backer Japan moved to save the troubled
peace process.
Japan's special peace envoy Yasushi Akashi was due here later Wednesday for
talks with both sides while Norway was expected to send envoys early next month.
The Tigers suspended their participation in direct negotiations in April last
year after six rounds of talks with the government. The rebels have described
the talks so far as a "waste of time".
However, the international community had projected the third round of talks
in Oslo in December 2002 as a breakthrough, with the Tigers' agreeing to a
federal solution in a country where 60,000 people had been killed in ethnic
bloodshed.
In a statement after those talks, the Norwegian foreign ministry said "the
parties agreed to explore a solution founded on the principle of internal
self-determination in areas of historical habitation of the Tamil-speaking
peoples, based on a federal structure within a united Sri Lanka".
The statement, which came to be known as the "Oslo Declaration", was
interpreted by diplomats as a sign that the Tigers were firmly committed to
working towards a federal state and there would be no return to war.
"I feel it necessary to clarify our position on this controversial issue,"
Balasingham said. "It must be stated that there was not any specific
proclamation titled the 'Oslo Declaration'.
"The decision to explore federalism was included in the record of decisions
at the Oslo talks and signed by the chief negotiators of both delegations and
the head of the Norwegian facilitating team."
Balasingham said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) still operated
within the "overall framework of the right to self-determination, with its
internal and external aspects".
If their demand for regional self-rule was rejected, he added, they would
have no alternative but to secede and form an independent state.
Western diplomats here see the LTTE's latest interpretation of the "Oslo
Declaration" as a new challenge for those directly involved in the peace
process.
Norway warned in July that the truce they brokered and put in place in
February 2002 had only "frozen" the war, but that this had begun to melt at the
edges.
The LTTE insists that peace talks can resume based only on their proposal for
an Interim Self-Governing Authority giving them regional autonomy.
The peace process is officially held up due to differences over an agenda for
re-starting talks, but diplomats involved in the initiative say the
unprecedented split among the rebels could be the real reason.
Norway has described the escalation of violence following a split in the
Tamil Tiger movement as the most dangerous since the ceasefire.
Regional Tiger commander V. Muralitharan, better known as Karuna, led a split
in March. Five weeks later, he escaped an onslaught and went underground after
disbanding up to 6,000 fighters under him in the island's troubled east.
