Sri Lanka's Foreign Secretary, Dr Palitha Kohona, says the total defeat of the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) is a foregone conclusion after a civil conflict that has prevailed for more than 25 years. But Kohona also says in his exclusive interview with Shyam Bhatia of asianaffairs that the emphasis is on healing wounds and returning the country to normalcy, rather than engaging in witch- hunts against those who may have committed past crimes.

AA: How would you assess the status of the government's military operations in the north of Sri Lanka?
PK: Over the last few months government forces have persisted in pushing the LTTE back, first to the north and now towards the northeast corner of the island. Some of the major LTTE bastions have fallen, like Killinochchi etc. Now the LTTE is contained in an area, which is estimated to be roughly about 80 square kilometres. What they have done in the process of being pushed back is that they have herded the civilian population along with them. At the moment the civilians are being held in this small area against their will and literally held hostage. The LTTE knows that it has lost the war, that there is no future for it, but it is trying to use civilians as human shields to stop the government forces from moving in and crushing them completely.

AA: To what would you attribute the success of the government's military campaign after such a long conflict stretching back to more than 25 years?
PK: There are a number of reasons. One is the leadership provided by the current president who is determined to wipe out the terrorist LTTE once they had, over a period of 12 months, rejected his call for a negotiated end to this conflict. Secondly, the military also adopted a range of tactics that put the LTTE on the defensive. They became a conventional army defending pre-determined positions and they just did not have a chance against a well-trained and well-armed military force that belonged to a sovereign state. Thirdly, the LTTE's fund-raising overseas became severely curtailed as a result of them being proscribed by most of the democracies of the world and with that their ability to procure weapons from the black market also became limited. The navy successfully threw a cordon around the island to stop them smuggling. The air force also became very good at bombing selected targets in a very professional manner.

The civilian population which at one time may have supported the LTTE blindly also began to question them as their true representatives. We have had a large number of civilians fleeing from LTTE controlled areas, largely to protect their children from being recruited as combatants. Even over the last few days over 35,000 people have fled into government controlled areas.

AA: Do you anticipate total victory over the LTTE, followed by the disbanding of its infrastructure?
PK: Their defeat is a foregone conclusion. At the moment they are surrounded by 60,000 troops, they are well covered by artillery and the air force. They will not be able to last too much longer as a fighting force, but it is always possible that they will hang on the human, civilian shields and last for some time. We are hoping that good sense will prevail even at this late hour and that the LTTE will lay down its arms and give up its violence and terrorism.

AA: Does the government know the whereabouts of LTTE leader Prabhakaran?
PK: We believe he is still in hiding, but his whereabouts are not well known, they are not known at all. I suspect that he is the type of person who will sacrifice his people and then escape.

AA: Are you pleased by the support you have received from your neighbours and partners in SAARC?
PK: Undoubtedly, because our partners, including India, have been very supportive of our efforts to end the terrorist LTTE campaign in the north of the country. They have understood why we are doing it and they are playing a very supportive role. All our SAARC partners have been extremely understanding of Sri Lanka's position.

AA: Are you concerned that LTTE remnants may flee across the Palk Straits to India?
PK: I think that will be very difficult because we have naval assets in that part of the sea as well. At the same time Indian naval vessels are patrolling the bilateral border area. So we believe that it will be very difficult for many LTTE cadres to flee across to India. Some might slip through because there are literally hundreds of fishing boats scattered in that area and it is possible to hide among those fishing vessels, but a large-scale evacuation of LTTE cadres to south India is unlikely. And remember that India too has proscribed the LTTE as a terrorist organisation and I do not think that Delhi will entertain the idea of terrorists coming and taking refuge on Indian soil.

AA: Has India shown continuing interest in who within the LTTE organised the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi?
PK: That really has been solved because Prabhakaran and a number of others have been sentenced by an Indian court of justice for the murder of Rajiv Gandhi. The Indian authorities have absolutely no doubt as to who was responsible for the death of Rajiv Gandhi and on this count I do not think we need to speculate too much. There is a sentence that hangs over Prabhakaran in India.

AA: Turning to a more controversial issue, what is the Sri Lankan government's justification for setting up safe zones and detention centres?
PK: I think you are confusing two things here. The safe zones were created within the enclave that is currently controlled by the LTTE, so that civilians will not be subjected to shelling, or be caught in any crossfire. There was a safe zone established inland from the coast a few weeks ago. The military has honoured that area and moved the people who were in that safe zone to the coast. Now the Sri Lanka government has established yet another safe zone in the area where those people are located. The idea is that the government forces will not fire into that area, simply to ensure that civilians are not harmed. However much the LTTE might try to use the civilians as shields, our government forces will exercise great care not to fire into those areas.

Now, I think there was another element within your question, which relates to the camps being set up for internally displaced persons coming out of the LTTE areas. We have actually established reception centres for this purpose. These are not camps into which they will be confined. These people are coming out with only the clothes on their backs, they need healthcare, they need to be fed and children have to go to school. Then of course there are those who have known nothing but violence for the last 24 plus years who need to be rehabilitated and trained to become useful members of the community. For that purpose we have established these villages, welfare villages we call them, where civilians will be received and then hopefully within the next 12 months or so will be returned to their own villages. You will recall that a similar process happened in the Eastern Province last year when we evicted the LTTE from there. Something like 187,000 people were displaced on that occasion. They were also received in villages established by the government. The international community helped in that process and today over 95 per cent of those people are back in their villages and they are the masters of their own fate, they run their own affairs.

AA: Critical comparisons have been made between these welfare villages and concentration camps.
PK: These are villages where there are proper houses, proper healthcare facilities, proper kitchens, proper education facilities for the children and these will not be there forever. The idea is to process the internally displaced persons and return them to their own villages as soon as possible. You also have to remember that when the LTTE withdrew from those villages, they mined the villages. Today we are going through a process of de-mining those areas. Every day literally hundreds of land mines are being recovered and in the process many of our forces are losing their limbs — all for the sake of these civilians. But we will clear these villages and take these people back to their homes because these are our people, these are citizens of Sri Lanka and we owe it to them to ensure that normalcy is returned as soon as possible.

AA: Does Sri Lanka need to answer larger charges of human rights violations, including the expulsion of Tamils from Colombo?
PK: Let me take that first accusation, the expulsion of Tamils from Colombo. Let me start by saying that Colombo is 39 per cent Tamil today, another 20 per cent is Muslim, making the capital of Sri Lanka a minority dominated city. There are hundreds of thousands of Tamils who live there. They go to work in the morning, come back in the evening without any harassment. Many of the leading business houses in Colombo are Tamil owned and run, many of the professionals in the city are Tamils. If there was such harassment of Tamils in Colombo, one is entitled to ask what on earth they are doing there without fleeing to some other place. As to expulsions, I believe you are referring to an incident over a year ago when over 300 unregistered Tamil occupants of low cost community housing were taken out by police and told to go back to their villages. You also know that the country's Supreme Court stepped in that very same day and issued an order to the police to stop what they were doing. At the end of the day nobody was really sent out of the city, in fact the numbers have grown since then because more people have come out of the north to live in Colombo.

The Sri Lankan government is very keen to maintain its image as a country that respects human rights standards. The president himself was a human rights activist as an opposition politician. There is no reason for him to encourage his government to do anything else now that he is in power. Admittedly there are things that have happened with which we are not very comfortable. The government has committed itself to investigating each one of these cases and hopefully finding those responsible for these violations. But as you know its not always easy to distinguish between the ice cream seller who is earning a living, or the ice cream seller who is waiting to explode a bomb. We are also aware that the city has been infiltrated by a number of suicide bombers. The LTTE successfully deployed more than 300 suicide bombers in the last few years, killing over 3,000 innocents in the process. It's difficult for the forces of law and order to maintain safety and security for citizens in these circumstances. As a developing country fighting one of the most brutal terrorist forces in the world, Sri Lanka has not done too badly.

AA: What about your government's association with Tamil TMVP leader Karuna who has been accused of political assassinations and abductions? Is this something you are comfortable with?
PK: What is important to remember is that the TMVP, Karuna and Pillayan, his protégé, have given up violence and returned to the democratic mainstream. Karuna is now a member of parliament; Pillayan is the elected chief minister of the Eastern Province. Pillayan was a child soldier, so was Karuna, they both gave up violence. A similar thing happened in Northern Ireland. Nobody suggested that British democracy has suffered in the process, or that the British leadership should be uncomfortable with the fact that former IRA members are now in governing circles. The government of Sri Lanka does not believe in going on a witch-hunt after those who may have committed crimes in the past, because our goal is not to go looking for various witches so that they could be burnt at the stake, but to return the country to normalcy, to heal the wounds and look to the future so that the country and people can progress.

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