US embassy cable - 02COLOMBO1858

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 COLOMBO 001858 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR SA, SA/INS 
 
NSC FOR E. MILLARD 
 
LONDON FOR POL/RIEDEL 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 10-07-12 
TAGS: PGOV, PTER, PINS, PINR, PHUM, CE, Political Parties, LTTE - Peace Process 
SUBJECT:  To ease cohabitation tensions, president and 
PM Wickremesinghe agree to "joint" meetings 
 
Refs:  Colombo 1848, and previous 
 
(U) Classified by Ambassador E. Ashley Wills.  Reasons 
1.5 (b,d). 
 
1.  (C) Summary:  The Ambassador met Minister Milinda 
Moragoda and Norwegian Ambassador Westborg on October 5. 
In a wide-ranging discussion, Moragoda reviewed his 
recent meeting with President Kumaratunga, and said the 
two sides had agreed to hold regular high-level 
discussions on peace process and national security 
issues.  Re dealings with the Tamil Tigers, Westborg 
commented that the GSL was probably wise to focus on 
small, meliorative steps and not structural "big 
picture" matters that could prove controversial at this 
stage.  While the news re "joint" meetings was positive, 
it is hard to be optimistic about this latest effort to 
bridge the cohabitation divide.  End Summary. 
 
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Moragoda reviews meeting with Kumaratunga 
----------------------------------------- 
 
2.  (C) The Ambassador, DCM, and polchief met October 5 
with Milinda Moragoda, a minister and key player for the 
GSL on peace process issues, and Norwegian Ambassador 
Jon Westborg.  Moragoda, when he was not on his cell 
phone with the prime minister, reviewed his October 4 
meeting with President Kumaratunga and former Foreign 
Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, a key adviser.  Much of 
the two-and-a-half hour meeting with the president was 
taken up with what Moragoda called "a history lesson," 
as Kumaratunga reviewed how cohabitation ties had 
reached their currently parlous state.  Moragoda 
stressed that he had tried hard to understand 
Kumaratunga's litany of complaints, but admitted he had 
difficulty making sense of it all. 
 
3.  (C) (((Note:  Moragoda said Kumaratunga had repeated 
her long-standing complaint that her son had not been 
admitted to a well-known local high school some 15 years 
ago when PM Wickremesinghe was Education Minister.  In 
doing this, she apparently did not repeat her 
controversial public charge last week that 
Wickremesinghe and his staff had demanded a bribe in 
exchange for support for her son's application -- see 
Reftel.  Also see Westborg's comments below re another 
of the president's complaints, e.g., that the GSL should 
allow her to have a representative on its peace 
negotiation team.  End Note.))) 
 
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Two Sides agree to "Joint" meetings 
----------------------------------- 
 
4.  (C) Despite the complaints from Kumaratunga, 
Moragoda indicated that the meeting turned out to be 
productive.  After obtaining the prime minister's 
approval, Moragoda related that he had proposed that the 
two sides hold regular "joint" meetings to discuss peace 
process and national security issues.  The president had 
accepted the offer.  Reviewing the proposal with 
Ambassador Wills, Moragoda related that he would join 
with the PM and Defense Minister Marapana to form the 
GSL team, while the president would be accompanied by 
Kadirgamar and one other (as yet unnamed) adviser.  It 
was not clear how often the meetings would be held, but 
Moragoda indicated that he was thinking they would take 
place every couple of weeks, and before and after the 
upcoming rounds of talks with the Tamil Tigers. 
 
5.  (C) Ambassador Wills commented that the idea of 
holding the joint meetings was a positive development, 
which perhaps would lead to a long-term cooling down in 
tensions between the two sides.  In response, Moragoda 
said he sincerely hoped that it worked.  There were 
still outstanding tensions on other issues, however.  He 
noted that the GSL continued to pursue parliamentary 
agreement on a proposed constitutional amendment that 
would rein in the president's powers to call new 
elections and allow crossover voting.  Sri Lanka's 
Supreme Court was examining various petitions related to 
the government's proposed bill at this time.  Depending 
on how the Supreme Court handles the many petitions, 
including one that demands a popular referendum on the 
amendment, an up-or-down vote might take place in 
Parliament sometime in the next several weeks.  It was 
still up in the air whether the government had the two- 
thirds support necessary to win the vote, according to 
Moragoda.  The GSL had the support of the Tamil parties, 
but it was not yet clear whether enough members of the 
president's People's Alliance party intended to defect. 
 
----------------------- 
Dealing with the Tigers 
----------------------- 
 
6.  (C) Switching focus, the conversation turned to the 
status of the peace process.  Moragoda noted that the 
GSL was working hard to gain the release of six Sri 
Lankan soldiers held by the Tamil Tigers in Trincomalee 
District.  (Note:  The Tigers released one of the 
soldiers last week.  The other six soldiers have been 
detained since September 25 -- see Reftels.)  The Tigers 
were driving a hard bargain, demanding the release of 
two of their cadre held by the GSL.  The government 
hoped to resolve the issue and was putting pressure on 
the judiciary to give bail to the two LTTE cadre.  In 
any case, tensions in the east were hot over the issue 
and many roads in Trincomalee had been closed down by a 
strike on October 4.  In other parts of the east, 
Muslims were upset over Tiger activities, as well as 
other issues. 
 
7.  (C) (((Note:  Moragoda noted that he planned to 
visit Trincomalee on October 6 to check on the problems 
there.  In an October 7 meeting with the Ambassador, 
General Balagalle, the Army chief, said he had 
accompanied Moragoda on his trip to Trincomalee.  He 
said Moragoda had faced harsh questions about the 
soldiers' situation from many Sinhalese.  Moragoda had 
handled himself well, the general remarked, but there 
was a lot of tension in the air.  End Note.))) 
 
8.  (C) Ambassador Wills asked Westborg about Tiger 
spokesman Anton Balasingham's recent comments made after 
the mid-September talks in Thailand that seemed to edge 
away from separatism.  Westborg replied that Balasingham 
and the Tigers now seemed to support the idea of 
achieving regional autonomy (as opposed to outright 
independence) via negotiations.  In any case, the 
government seems to be making a wise choice in not 
pressing the Tigers for agreement on wide-ranging 
constitutional issues at this time, Westborg remarked. 
These issues made the Tigers uncomfortable and would 
force them to define their terms, which was something 
the group did not want to do at this stage in the 
negotiations.  In its past discussions with the Tigers 
over the course of many years, the government had always 
pressed the group on complex "big picture" 
constitutional proposals re regional devolution and the 
like.  The Tigers had been scarred away.  Better for the 
GSL to proceed as it is by gaining agreement first on 
smaller, practical issues, such as the lifting of 
restrictions on travel and other confidence-building 
measures. 
 
9.  (C) The Ambassador also asked Westborg about the 
president's request to attach a representative to the 
government's peace negotiation team.  Westborg said this 
idea would only work out if both the president and the 
PM made the choice of who the representative would be. 
There was no way the Tigers would accept working with a 
person who was identified as the president's 
representative alone.  The group did not trust her. 
They felt that she was surrounded by Sinhalese 
extremists, and it was an unfortunate fact of the peace 
process that the Tigers often acted emotionally and 
irrationally to any hint of Sinhalese chauvinism 
emanating from the south. 
 
10.  (C) (((Note:  Although Westborg did not explicitly 
mention it, it is well-known that the Tigers will not 
sit down in any room with former Foreign Minister 
Kadirgamar, who is otherwise a logical choice for any 
presidential appointment to the negotiating team.  As 
Kadirgamar is Tamil, the Tigers consider him to be a 
traitor to their cause.  Westborg did note that 
Kadirgamar, beyond his sometimes hard-edged stance re 
the peace process, had revealed himself to be deeply 
committed to the plight of Tamils, feeling that the 
community had indeed suffered severe persecution at the 
hands of the Sinhalese.  End Note.))) 
 
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Comment 
------- 
 
11.  (C) The news that the two sides have agreed to 
"joint" meetings is constructive.  That said, it is hard 
to be optimistic about this latest effort to bridge the 
cohabitation divide.  Our assessment is that the 
tensions between the two sides are so endemic and so 
personalized at this point that we do not see them going 
away anytime soon.  The ongoing debate over the proposed 
bill limiting her powers could prove the catalyst for 
renewed cohabitation combat, for example. 
 
12.  (C) Moragoda deserves praise for winning the 
president's agreement to the proposal involving regular 
meetings with the PM.  He really seems to understand the 
need to cool down tensions to the extent possible for 
the sake of the peace process.  (Note:  He also seems a 
good choice as interlocutor with Kumaratunga.  In one of 
those rare asides in which you briefly glimpse the 
"real" Sri Lanka, Moragoda told the Ambassador that he 
shared a caste background with Kumaratunga, a fact which 
she had told him was important to her.  Both his 
grandfather and Kumaratunga's slain husband were members 
of the "Durawe," a caste traditionally involved in 
"toddy tapping," the first step in brewing a popular 
alcoholic beverage called arrack.  Such is the stuff of 
better cohabitation ties!) 
 
13.  (C) With respect to the peace process, Westborg's 
comments that the government should continue its current 
focus on small, meliorative steps were perceptive.  The 
Tigers seem to be reacting well to the government's 
current policy of moving toward what we call a "sloppy 
solution" in which the two sides build up trust over a 
long period through an established pattern of 
confidence-building measures.  As Westborg has noted, 
past peace processes have been literally blown apart by 
GSL efforts to get the Tiger's to agree first (and on 
the dotted line) to "big picture" structural issues, 
such as what the north and east might look like down the 
road following a peace accord.  End Comment. 
 
14. (U) Minimize considered. 
 
WILLS