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Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and opposition leaders asking for their support to influence the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to resume negotiations again.
The dialogue between Lanka and LTTE came to an abrupt end when Lanka did not give guarantees of safe passage for the LTTE cadre traveling to Geneva. A belated permission to use a helicopter was spurned by the LTTE. An incensed Lankan Government called for international sanctions on the LTTE. This call was answered with an assassination attempt on Lankan Army Chief Fonseka by a suicide bomber. While the bomber was believed to be LTTE, there are some questions raised about how a Tamil woman posing as being pregnant could enter one of the most protected army camps and have had access to being near the Army Chief known to be a hawk. The implication here is that the Janata Vimukthi Peramunna with chauvinistic and violent background may have tried to assassinate Fonseka to whip up communal passions against the Tamils.
Regardless, the Lankan Government seems desperate to continue the dialogue because it knows that a civil war will be essentially Pyrrhic. Samaraweera seems to have gotten Communist leader Prakash Karat's attention. Karat approving said "Despite LTTE attacks they want India and the international community to put pressure on the LTTE to get back to the negotiating table." It is not clear if Karat meant that he wanted India to should make general announcements or go further such as induce the LTTE into dialogue. The latter will be difficult as India has banned the LTTE and hold's its leader Vellupillai Prabakaran responsible for the murder of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Therefore, it cannot circumvent criminal law, investigative agencies, Interpol red corner notices to communicate with the
LTTE.
It can however use middlemen such as Federal Government coalition partner Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and its leader Karunanidhi to talk to Prabakaran and his front men in Chennai. Karunanidhi and his party were initially implicated in the assassination of Gandhi but were held innocent. Karunanidhi who is favored to win the State polls may agree but his former trainee and now opposing leader Vaiko who leads the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam will oppose any pressure on the
LTTE.
But India can bring pressure on the LTTE indirectly. It can cut the drug smuggling operation run by Sri Lankan Tamil refugees that runs into 1200 kilogram of Afghan opium processed into heroin with a street value of USD 50 million that is undoubtedly going to finance the LTTE's war. Apart from creating serious law and order situation in India, the flow of heroin may accelerate as other insurgency or terror operations within India may use the same route of financing.
For example, the very imaginative Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) can use Pakistan, Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, Nepal, and the porous borders in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to transport drugs through the Naxal corridor. It could source Afghani opium, process them into heroin in Pakistan, and transport them through the Indian Naxal corridor to be exported either through the insurgency-ridden North East or through the Sri Lankan Tamils. They could use the proceeds to fund its operations in India which could be more than just jihad in the name of Islam but also open new non-religious fronts such as Naxals, territorial dispute, caste-based private armies, linguistic extremist groups, etc.
By curbing the drug trade through extra vigilance and stronger application of law through fast-track courts, it can stem this potential security threat. And, by reducing this money to a trickle, India would have indirectly forced LTTE into dialogue.
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