By Edward Luce, FT; 04/08/02
On Tuesday, Velupillai Prabhakaran, the shadowy leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger separatist group, will hold his first press conference since 1990.
The guerrilla leader, whose group, the LTTE, has been branded as terrorist by the US, UK and India, is expected to set out his terms for holding talks on ending a war that has claimed more than 60,000 lives since 1983.
Is Mr. Prabhakaran preparing to exchange his battle fatigues for the trademark suits of a statesman?
Optimists in Colombo - where the new government, led by Ranil Wickremesinghe, has embarked on the most credible peace initiative since the war began - say that the 47-year-old Tiger h as already shown signs that he wants to make the transition.
Although the LTTE has agreed to temporary pauses in the past, last month's Norwegian-brokered ceasefire was signed by Mr. Prabhakaran - the first time he has put his name to any document. The Tiger leader has subsequently been photographed wearing a safari suit and accompanied by his wife - again, both for the first time. These small but significant changes are taken as good auguries.
"Prabhakaran has always paid obsessive attention to propaganda and public image," said Narayan Swamy, a leading author on the Tigers.
Analysts in Colombo also point to the growing war fatigue among both Tamil supporters of the LTTE and Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese community. The 10,000-strong LTTE and the 120,000- strong Sri Lankan army appear to have reached a stalemate, they say.
But, as Mr. Swamy concedes, there is an element of hope in such reasoning. Others, including some western observers, say there is nothing in Mr. Prabhakaran's long and ruthless career t o suggest he is capable of "doing a Gerry Adams" - after Northern Ireland's Sinn Fein leader who renounced the bullet for the ballot box. "I suppose pigs might fly but will the Tiger change his stripes?" asked one.
Mr. Prabhakaran's guerrilla career began at the age of 20 when he used a homemade weapon to kill the mayor of Jaffna, a Tamil city in the north of the country. The young assassin then founded the LTTE on terms that threatened death to anyone who departed for a rival group. Dozens of LTTE leaders and Tamil politicians have been killed for crossing Mr. Prabhakaran.
Others, including a president of Sri Lanka, a prime minister of India, several cabinet ministers in Colombo and the LTTE's second-in-command, have also been assassinated at Mr. Prabhakaran's behest. "Prabhakaran is less tolerant of dissent than any other separatist leader in the world," said Abbo Yussuf, a Muslim Tamil politician in Colombo. "I see no evidence to suggest he is preparing to abandon his approach now."
But Mr. Prabhakaran's sometimes diabolical methods, including the creation of the infamous Black Tiger group, which has carried out 272 suicide bombings, also follow a consistent logic that may have brought Colombo to the brink of until now unthinkable concessions.
"People often focus on the LTTE's tactics and dismiss it as evil," said R. Sampanthan, a moderate Tamil politician. "But you have to see it is a result of the pogroms which the Sinhalese visited on the Tamils before 1983 and since."
For a group that swears allegiance to Mr. Prabhakaran rather than to the cause as a whole, the LTTE is sufficiently disciplined to adhere to any deal Mr. Prabhakaran might reach.
But the LTTE's fanaticism is also a potential weakness. Having taken his "cadre" this far, Mr. Prabhakaran cannot afford to accept anything other than deep autonomy for the Tamils.
On Tuesday, Mr. Prabhakaran will give some clue as to whether he is genuinely ready for peace. Much will also depend on whether Colombo is ready to risk potentially unpopular concessions.
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