PRESIDENT KUMARATUNGA TELLS AMBASSADOR

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 COLOMBO 000587

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR SA, SA/INS, LONDON FOR POL/RIEDEL; NSC FOR

E. MILLARD

E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/07/2013
TAGS: PGOV PREL PTER PINR PARM
SUBJECT: PRESIDENT KUMARATUNGA TELLS AMBASSADOR
COHABITATION ISN'T WORKING; TIE-UP WITH LEFTIST JVP LIKELY

Classified By: Ambassador E. Ashley Wills. Reasons 1.5 B, D.


1. (C) SUMMARY: I spent two hours 15 minutes with President
Kumaratunga on Saturday, April 5. I didn't learn much. END
SUMMARY.


2. (C) I met with President Chandrika Bandaranaike
Kumaratunga for two hours 15 minutes at her residence
Saturday afternoon, April 5. She was attended by former
Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, while I was alone. I
was supposed to meet with her the previous day. But after
waiting 50 minutes beyond the appointed hour - a time she had
proposed, by the way - I got up and left. A few minutes
later, she reached me on my cellphone, apologized in a
charming and disarming way and we rescheduled for the next
day.


3. (C) When I arrived on this occasion, I was surprised to
find her and Kadirgamar waiting for me. They escorted me
from the reception area to the rear garden, where we sat
under one of the world's largest banyan trees. We also sat
under a south Asian sun that would have blistered a barnacle,
and it did in the event blister my bald head. CBK glowed, as
it were, in an outsized way, while Kadirgamar and I sweated.
So I was compensated in weight loss for a meeting that came
close to wasting my time.

D'S SPEECH


4. (C) I asked whether she had seen the Deputy Secretary's
speech at the CSIS conference, and whether she had noted his
comments asserting the USG's conviction that she deserves
respect and inclusion in Sri Lanka's attempt at peace. She
thanked him for the remarks but not with evident conviction.
It was as though this was her due and thus not so special.
One encounters this regal attitude in CBK often. It is very
annoying.

COHABITATION


5. (C) She probably spent an hour discoursing on this
subject. I began by stressing once again our belief that
cooperation between her party, the PA, and the UNP would
increase the odds of success in the peace negotiations. Such
cooperation would surely get the LTTE's attention and make it
impossible for the Tigers to claim, as they now occasionally
do, that division between the PA and the UNP means that they
cannot be trusted to honor any deal with the Tamils. In her
discursive, repetitive reply, she told me how she had been
mistreated by the Prime Minister, how her party cadre had
been abused by the UNP and thus, she concluded, she was now
completely lacking in trust in the government. She did not
exclude the possibility of improving cohabitation, but she
said it was entirely up to the government to take the
initiative.

PA-JVP ALLIANCE


6. (C) After acknowledging that as a foreign diplomat, I of
course had no business venturing into Sri Lanka's internal
affairs, I proceeded to ask her whether she intended to do a
deal with the hard left JVP. She admitted she hoped to but
said there were still a few "minor matters" to be sorted out.
In response to various queries from me, she said: the JVP is
truly democratic (unlike the UNP and the LTTE); it has
accepted that the free market will prevail in Sri Lanka (I
said I doubted it, citing the JVP party leader's comment on a
TV show last week that his party embraced the Cuban model
(!)); it has agreed to a federal solution to Sri Lanka (again
I cited numerous public comments by JVP leaders that they
favor a unitary state with an unspecified amount of
devolution); and that it was less inclined to violence and
corruption than the PM's UNP (to the former assertion I
politely replied that the JVP had twice carried out armed
insurrections in Sri Lanka; to the latter, I said the JVP
might be less corrupt but that could be because it had never
held power). Our disagreements on the JVP, as the foregoing
suggests, were frequent, but were expressed goodnaturedly.

IRAQ

7. (C) As I got up to leave, I asked her for her views on
our military action against Saddam's regime. She said very
little in reply, her major point being that she wished we had
given inspections a chance. (From various sources, we know
she embraces the French view utterly.)

COMMENT


8. (C) This was CBK at her most aggravating. She spoke
interminably and offered very little that she hadn't told me
several times before. During her rambling riff on Ranil's
perfidy, I was reminded of a great put-down I once heard
about a player on my college baseball team: does so-and-so,
one teammate mused, ever think anything that he doesn't say?
Sometimes, indeed, CBK seems to be speaking in the arrogant
manner of one who believes every thought she has is
expressible. Earlier this week, I ran into John Hume, the
Irish Nobel laureate, who had just met CBK. His assessment
of her was to the point: "The woman is crazy, as
self-absorbed as any human being I've ever met!" I do not
think she is nuts because she frequently can be cogent but
she does seem occasionally to be diagonally parked across
sanity's border. Perhaps that is understandable given the
personal tragedies she has endured in her life, most recently
her near-death experience with an LTTE suicide bomber.


9. (C) Such news as there was in this meeting was not good.
Cohabitation is in bad repair and a deal between the PA and
the JVP looks likely. The latter could be followed by a snap
election, which could set back peace talks for quite a while.



WILLS