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Sri Lanka : Row over Indian demand for extradition of Prabhakaran |
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The visit of a three-member Multi Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) from India to Sri Lanka to allegedly seek extradition of the LTTE supremo V. Prabhakaran, has triggered a big controversy in political circles in Colombo. The controversy relates to Home Minister L K Advani’s statement in Parliament last week that the MDMA was in Sri Lanka to press for the extradition of Prabhakaran, who is hiding in the Vanni jungles, who is accused of masterminding the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. India first made its request for Prabhakaran to be handed over for trial in 1993 after he was identified as the chief conspirator in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The request has been pending since then. Mr. Advani told Parliament on November 30 that a team of officials from the MDMA had visited Sri Lanka between November 13 and 23 and met Sri Lanka’s Attorney General and Solicitor General to press for Prabhakaran’s extradition.
Although government spokesman in Sri Lanka have denied Advani’s statement, many newspapers there insist that the Indian team did seek Prabhakaran’s extradition. Sunday Times of Colombo claimed that during the talks, the two sides reviewed an earlier Indian request for Prabhakaran’s extradition. Another paper Sunday Leader said, Sri Lankan government has already informed INdia on previous occasions that its writ does not run in Northern Vanni region where the LTTE leader presumably lives. Another paper said, the Indian MDMA team which visited Colombo last month also sought help from Sri Lankan s security agencies in acquiring evidence to establish possible links between the LTTE and Tamil Nadu politicians including MDMK leader Vaiko and the Tamil National Movement leader P Nedumaran who helped the Tamil Nadu and Karanataka governments in the Rajkumar hostage crisis. Both Vaiko and Nedumaran had made secret visits to Sri Lanka’s North East in the past to meet Prabhakaran.
The Sri Lankan Attorney General KC Kamlasadeyson has however stressed that during the visit, the MDMA team did not raise extradition issue. He told SundaY Leader that the Indian team however wanted to interrogate and LTTE suspect, Nixon, who is in custody in Colombo and was allegedly involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi. He said though the permission was refused, his office obtained a court order permitting Sri Lanka’s CID to interrogate him and record his statement in the presence of the MDMA team. (The MDMA was setup by the Home Ministry in 1998 to follow up leads that were said to have emerged from the Jain Commission of enquiry into the Rajiv Gandhi Assassination.)
The Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ratnagiri Vikremanaike has emphasized that Prabhakaran would not be extradited to India. “We will not do such a dirty thing” he said when asked on Dec. 3 whether Sri Lanka would handover Prabhakaran to face trial in India. In an interview to the state-run Thinakaran Mr. Wickremasinghe s aid, when a fugitive wants to talk peace it would be the priority of the government to think on those lines rather than act to extradite him.
Another daily Island has however reported that Interpol has sent worldwide notice for the arrest of the LTTE chief.
Many Sri Lankan newspapers have alleged that Mr. Advani made the statement in a subtle move to thwart the peace process at a time when the Norwegian facilitator had come up with a draft document to kick start the peace talks between the government and the LTTE chief. Reacting to the charge, Indian officials in Colombo however said, the visit of the MDMA delegation had nothing to do with the ongoing peace efforts. They said, linking of MDMA’s visit the peace process was nothing but “an imaginative contextualisation”.
Norway is reported to have drafted a schedule to deescalate the conflict as a first step in the peace process. Media reports in Colombo say, Norwegian peace envoy Erik Solhein who made at least four visits to Sri Lanka this year, has drawn up a mutually re-enforceable schedule to be implemented on a staggered basis within a specific time. Diplomatic sources having quoted as saying that Solhein formulated the document of triconsultations with both sides and suggested its implementation on a step by step reciprocal basis. A definite date has however not been fixed for the first stage of the conflict deescalation schedule.
Mr. Solhein who had a meeting with Prabhakaran in his Vanni jungle hideout and latter briefed the Sri Lankan President on his talks latter told newsmen that the rebel leader had not laid any preconditions. In his Annual speech marking Hero’s Day on November 17, Prabhakaran proposed secession of armed hostilities before the talks begun, but the stressed that these should not be interpreted as preconditions. The LTTE ideologue and chief negotiator, Dr. Anton Balasinham has however demanded that the Lankan government must lift the ban on the LTTE before talks can begun. He said in London that instead of grasping the olive branch extended by Mr. Prabhakaran in his hero’s Day address, Colombo was seeking a British ban on the LTTE, beefing up its military and talking of total inhalation of the LTTE as being the only solution to the ethnic problem of the island.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wikremanaike, known for hawkish posturing, has said, he would not impair the peace process if the LTTE genuinely sought to begun negotiations. He was reacting to the remarks made by Prabhakaran that “this government as several tongues, each addressing a different audience. Chandrika and Kadirgamar present an amicable picture to the international community while the Prime Minister and the Army Commander placate the local chauvinistic forces”.
Meanwhile, a former Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India, K. Godage, has alleged that late Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi repeatedly warned the Premadasa Government who had first manoeuvred the withdrawal of IPKF forces and then initiated talks with the LTTE that the Tamil Tigers were only taking him up the garden path and would scuttle the talks and go to war at a time and place of their choosing. In an article in the Island, Mr. Godage quoted Mr. Gandhi as telling President Premadasa that the LTTE was buying time to prepare its forces and would attack when they were ready. But, obviously, President Premadasa, who himself was killed by a human suicide bomber of the LTTE, ignored the warnings because of a misplaced faith in the LTTE’s goodwill.
In the light of these experiences, Mr. Godage said in his article, any ceasefire in the future should be monitored by an international team and that the LTTE should decommission its weapons under the supervision of an international team of weapons inspectors. The international community must also be prepared to underwrite any agreement with the LTTE, he said.
The Indian State was also under siege from the menace of the LTTE-ISI nexus during the 1990s. The Janata Party President, Subramanian Swamy, in an article, says the LTTE-ISI nexus has ramification for Indian security in three dimensions: first, their common hatred of India translates itself into undermining the Indian political system. Assassinations, bribery and honey-trapping of key Indian personalities in politics, media and academia are its tools in this subversion. Second, the LTTE-ISI nexus is interacting with and giving training to every secessionist, terrorist and sub-ethnic outfit in India. The LTTE trains the ULFA and the PWG in sabotage and weaponry. Balkanisation of India is the nexus goal. The recent Veerappan kidnapping episode has confirmed the warning on the nexus between the LTTE and the Tamil separatists. Third, the LTTE-ISI nexus masterminds the cash-rich narcotics trade from Afghanistan to Europe and the US via Chennai with a stopover in strongholds of Palermo and Milan in Italy.
Mr. Swamy says that in trying to break the ISI-LTTE nexus, the Indian Government should pursue wit h vigour the apprehending of the LTTE supremo, V. Prabhakaran, and his second-in-command, Pottu Amman, who are proclaimed offenders under Indian law.
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