(Excerpted from Men and Memories by
JR Jayewardene)

A timetable was worked out between the two governments for signing an Accord based on these proposals to take place preferably in January 1987. Chidambaram and Natwar Singh visited Colombo for further discussions with me for the third time on December 17, 1986. No agreement could be reached at these discussions for (a) ( the merger of the two Provinces (the North and the East) or (b) exclusion of the Amparai District from the Eastern Province.

An official statement issued after the 19 December 19 meeting, made the following points:

President J.R. Jayewardene and the two Indian Ministers discussed further ideas in continuation of the discussions held in the past. At the end of the discussions, the following proposals emerged:

i) The present territory comprising the Eastern Province minus the Amparai Electoral District may constitute the new Eastern Province.

ii) A Provincial Council will be established for the new Eastern Province.

iii) The institutional linkages between the Northern Province and the Eastern Province discussed earlier will be further refined in order to make it more acceptable to the parties concerned.

iv) The Sri Lanka Government will be willing to consider a proposal for a second stage of constitutional development providing for the Northern Province and the new Eastern Province to modalities being agreed upon for ascertaining the wishes of the people comprised in the Northern Province and the Eastern Province separately.

v) The Sri Lanka Government is willing to consider the creation of an office of Vice-President to be appointed by the President for a specified term.

vi) The five Muslim M.P.s of the Eastern Province may be invited to visit India and to discuss matters of mutual concern with the Tamil side under the auspices of the Government of India.

It would appear that the LTTE was intent on scuttling the agreement that the two governments were on the verge of signing and as a means of preventing this they hit upon the notion of a unilateral declaration of Independence in the North of the Island. The Sri Lanka Government’s response to this was predictably tough.

In an attempt to preempt such a declaration, the government sent troop reinforcements into the Eastern and Northern provinces with instructions to clear these areas of the LTTE and other separatist groups. Contrary to expectations, the LTTE did not put up much of a fight. The LTTE forces fled to the Jaffna peninsula.

The Indian Government, much perturbed by this turn of events, put considerable pressure on the Sri Lankan Government to abandon these military moves and to resume the search for a political solution. These public expressions of displeasure from New Delhi strained relations between the two countries in February and March 1987. On March 14, 1987, an Indian emissary, another Minister of State, Dinesh Singh, was sent to meet me in the hope that the political process could be revived.

In response, the Sri Lankan Government offered the Tamils a ceasefire for the duration of the national holidays in April 1987. The LTTE spurned this offer and responded with the Good Friday-Bus Massacre in April where 130 persons were mowed down by automatic weapons on the road from Trincomalee to Colombo. The LTTE followed this up with a bomb explosion in Colombo’s main bus station in which over 100 persons were killed.

Faced with a serious erosion of political support as a result of these outrages, the government decided to make an attempt to regain control of the Jaffna peninsula. ‘Operation Liberation’, which began in April 1987 in the Vadamarachchi division of the North-Eastern part of the peninsula, was directed at preventing the hitherto easy movement of men and material from Tamil Nadu. By the end of May, Sri Lankan forces had gained control of this area.

The LTTE, the most formidable Tamil separatist group, had suffered a serious setback, and in a region they had dominated for long. At this point, India moved swiftly to prevent the subjugation of the Jaffna peninsula by the Sri Lanka forces. The Indian High Commissioner, J.N. Dixit, pointedly informed Lalith Athulathmudali, Minister of National Security, that India would not permit the Sri Lanka Army to take Jaffna town. The same message was conveyed to me.

In the course of my speech at the Bank of Ceylon’s new headquarters building opening on 27 May 27, I dwelt at some length on the Vadamarachchi operation, and the government’s intention to proceed with that till the LTTE forces were defeated. In the evening, Dixit called on me at my home in Ward Place and conveyed a message from Rajiv. The gist of it was written by Dixit on an envelope! It read as follows:

1. Deeply disappointed and distressed

2. Thousands of civilians killed since 1983, has aroused tremendous indignation.

3. Your latest offensive in Jaffna peninsula has altered the entire basis of our understanding.

4. We cannot accept genocide.

5. Please do not force us to review our policies.

The “review of our policies”, which Dixit threatened on behalf of the Indian Government, came. There was first a public monetary grant of US$3.2 million from the Tamil Nadu Government to the LTTE and its allies. The Indian Government, for its part, escalated the level of its own involvement in Sri Lanka when it announced that it was sending shipments of food and petroleum products to Jaffna, which, it claimed, was facing a severe shortage of these items through a blockade by the Sri Lankan forces.

Despite the refusal of the Sri Lankan Government to accept this offer or concede the need for it, a first shipment, in a flotilla of about 20 Indian fishing vessels, was dispatched on June 3, 1987, but was turned back by the Sri Lanka Navy. When this happened, the Indian Air Force in a blatant violation of International Law and of the Sri Lankan airspace, dropped food and medical supplies to Jaffna on the following day.

All these constituted an unmistakable demonstration of Indian support for the Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka. The Indian supply of food to Jaffna continued over the next few weeks by sea with the formal, but clearly reluctant, agreement of the Sri Lankan Government. In the rest of the country, the mood was a mixture of anxiety over a long war of attrition in the North.

The demonstration of India’s sea and air power achieved a number of objectives. It saved the LTTE from imminent destruction, stopped any further expansion of the Sri Lanka Army’s campaign after Vadamarachchi, and reduced the Sri Lanka Government to military impotence if India continued to give more help to the terrorist movement, especially the LTTE.

In June 1987, Minister Gamini Dissanayake received a letter from N. Ram, the Associate Editor of the Madras based Indian newspaper The Hindu. Dissanayake and Ram had known each other for some time as Gamini was on the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka, and during his visits to India to discuss cricket affairs, he got to know Ram who was also interested in cricket. Ram was also known to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

The letter contained proposals for a possible settlement of the Sri Lanka crisis through Indian mediation. After talks with Dixit, who was given a mandate by his government to discuss with me the principles in Ram’s letter, I received word from Rajiv, sometime after July 9, 1987, that he was intent on helping to break the deadlock in the negotiations on the settlement of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict, and that he would force the Tamil separatists to accept a settlement on the basis of the agreements reached between the Governments of India and Sri Lanka between May and December 1986.

The gist of the offer was as follows: If the Sri Lanka Government would agree to a joinder of the Northern and Eastern Provinces on a temporary basis, India would impose a settlement on the Tamils. If the LITE would not agree, the settlement would still go ahead, and they would be forced to comply.

I suggested that the temporary joinder should have a time-limit and that a referendum be held in the Eastern Province to decide whether or not people there wished their Province to be linked to the Northern Province.

The Indians agreed to this. I took a calculated risk, as I had in 1957, opposed the Bandaranaike–Chelvanayagam Pact on this very issue. There was however the escape clause of a referendum which I hoped would mollify critics of this move, because the Sinhalese and the Muslims who together constituted 60 per cent of the population of the Eastern Province would not willingly accept this merger and that at a referendum the 60 per cent would win.

By mid-July, the Indian Government agreed to underwrite the settlement, provided some of the foreign policy concerns were included in the letters that were to be exchanged. Rajiv too was tired of Prabhakaran and the LTTE and decided to go along with me, with the acquiescence of the LTTE, if possible, or even without it. He agreed to afford such military assistance as was necessary to implement these proposals if the Government accepted it.

Sri Lanka insisted that the agreement should be between the two governments and not between the Sri Lanka Government and the LTTE and other terrorist groups. India agreed to this. Sri Lanka also agreed to the mention of the foreign policy concerns of the Indian Government in the exchange of letters which formed part of the annexures to the agreement to be incorporated in a treaty between the two countries at a later date.

Minister Gamini Dissanayake on my behalf and High Commissioner Dixit on behalf of Rajiv Gandhi, did much of the preliminary drafting which were put up to the two leaders for their approval.

The draft of the agreement was ready by July 15, 1987 for discussion by the Cabinet at its meetings. Mr. Dixit attended the meetings of the Cabinet held on July 15 and 25. Rajiv Gandhi, in the meantime, informed me that he was prepared to come to Colombo on Saturday, July 25, to sign the Accord. I requested him to delay the arrival till Wednesday, July 29.

I needed to get the support of the Cabinet, the Working Committee of the UNP and Prime Minister Premadasa, who was out of the island and was due to return on July 25. The final Cabinet meeting was fixed for Monday July 27. On July 27, the Cabinet approved of my signing the Accord on the scheduled date, that is July 29. One member of the Cabinet, Minister Gamini Jayasuriya, resigned a few weeks later when the Provincial Council Bill was approved by the Cabinet to be presented in Parliament.

On July 29, 1987, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi arrived in Sri Lanka and the Agreement was signed, while there was violent opposition to its signing in certain parts of the island, especially in Colombo.

I was informed by the Inspector General of Police that 4,000 of his men were deployed in Kandy where the annual Perehera (religious procession) to do honour to the Buddha’s Tooth Relic was being held and large crowds were gathering worsening my predicament.

Rajiv offered to help. We agreed that he would provide me with planes and helicopters to bring down some of our troops from the North to the South and that he would send a few of his troops to do ground duty in the North. It was peaceful after the Agreement was signed. The main points of the Agreement were as follows:

A complete cessation of hostilities, and the surrender of all weapons held by the Tamil separatist activists, within seventy-two hours of the implementation of the Accord.

The provision of Indian military assistance to help in its implementation.

The establishment of a system of Provincial Councils in the island based on the island’s nine Provinces.

The joining together of the Northern and Eastern Provinces into a single administrative unit with a Provincial Council for it to be elected within three months.

The holding of a referendum in the Eastern Province to determine whether the mixed population of Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims there would support its merger with the Northern Provinces into a single Tamil-dominated province.

A general amnesty for all Tamil separatist activists in custody, imprisoned or facing charges, after the general surrender of arms.

The repatriation of about 100,000 Tamil refugees in India to Sri Lanka.

The resumption of the repatriation of Indian citizens to Sri Lanka, under the terms of agreements reached between the Governments of Sri Lanka and India in 1964 and 1974.

The prevention of the use of Indian territory by Tamil separatist activists for military or propaganda purposes; the prevention of the military use of Sri Lanka ports, Trincomalee in a manner prejudicial to Indian interests; and Tamil and English to have equal status with Sinhala, as official languages in Sri Lanka.

Rajiv Gandhi narrowly escaped serious injury, if not death itself, as stated earlier, at the Guard of Honour Ceremony prior to his departure from Colombo on July 30. Four years later on May 20, 1991, the LTTE succeeded in doing precisely that in Tamil Nadu.

On his return to New Delhi on July 31, 1987, Rajiv Gandhi was informed that Prabhakaran had at last agreed to accept the Agreement. He conveyed this information to me on August 2, 1987 in a document that reads as follows:

1. In the light of offers conveyed through Dixit in August, about interim administrative arrangements in the North-Eastern Province to be created, and offers concerning employment of Tamil separatist cadres after they surrender their arms, Prabhakaran, leader of the LTTE has: agreed to participation in the implementation of the agreement; agreed to the surrender of arms; and Prabhakaran would like to be in Jaffna personally to organize surrender of arms.

2. In the interest of conciliation and peaceful implementation of the Accord, Prabhakaran will be airdropped at Jaffna by the evening of today, August 2. Prabhakaran has agreed to the following schedule for the surrender of arms, etc. as given by the Government of India:

August 2 evening arrive in Jaffna

August 3 noon Indian Army to fan out into all parts of the Jaffna peninsula, including Jaffna City.

August 4 surrender of arms by LTTE. Events to be witnessed by the Press and TV.

August 5 President Jayewardene may kindly announce the decision in principle, to set up an Interim Administration in the North-Eastern Province before Provincial Council elections. Details to be worked out in consultation with Government of India.

3. I would like to assure you that if Prabhakaran goes back on his word in any manner or fails to organize surrender of arms, the Indian Army will move to disarm LTTE by force.

4. In the light of the above, time limit for the surrender of arms will have to be extended from 1530 hours of August 3 to the evening of August 5: another 48 hours extension is envisaged. Ceasefire will be maintained by the Indian forces.

5. I request that no publicity should be given to these arrangements till the late afternoon of 3 August 3. The above arrangements can be announced on the August 3 afternoon.

For three months there was peace. In October 1987, when certain prominent LITE leaders were captured illegally conveying arms to Sri Lanka, the Sri Lanka Government insisted that the captured men be brought to Colombo for interrogation. When they were to be brought to Colombo by plane, 17 of them consumed cyanide and 12 of them died. Their deaths gave the LTTE the excuse to do what they had always intended to do. They turned their guns on the Sinhalese in Jaffna, Batticaloa and Trincomalee.

Since that date, the LTTE have been fighting the IPKF, till the IPKF was withdrawn at the request of the Sri Lanka Government. However, because of the Agreements, except the LTTE, all the terrorist and other groups had given up violence and were cooperating with the government and in the democratic way of life. They were the EPRLF, TELO, EROS, PLOT and TULF.

Provincial Council elections were held for the combined Northern and Eastern Provinces on November 19, 1988 and an EPRLF Chief Minister was elected. Much of this has been nullified by the LTTE’s violent opposition. They have fought some of the other groups mentioned above and killed many of their supporters. Today they alone are fighting a battle with the present Government of Sri Lanka whereas the others have all joined in the democratic way of life and some are representatives of their areas in the supreme legislature, the Parliament of Sri Lanka. India no longer helps them. They instead fought them in Sri Lanka and are fighting them in India.