To ease cohabitation tensions, president and

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 LTTE
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
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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.

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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