SRI LANKAN OPPOSITION LEADER GIVES FRANK

C O N F I D E N T I A L COLOMBO 000136

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/24/2016
TAGS: PGOV PREL PTER CE
SUBJECT: SRI LANKAN OPPOSITION LEADER GIVES FRANK
ASSESSMENT ON PEACE AND DIPLOMACY TO UNDERSECRETARY BURNS


Classified By: Ambassador Jeffrey J. Lunstead. For reasons 1.4 (B&D)


1. (C) SUMMARY: On January 23 Under Secretary Burns and
Ambassador Lunstead met with United National Party (UNP)
leader and former Prime Minister and presidential contender
Ranil Wickremesinghe. Wickremesinghe thanked U/S Burns for
showing support for Sri Lanka and the peace process. The
veteran opposition leader feared that Sri Lanka was sliding
back to war due to President Rajapaksa's extremist political
allies in the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and Jathika
Hela Urumaya (JHU). He claimed that the January 20 all party
conference had achieved a consensus that President Rajapaksa
not try to renegotiate the Cease-Fire Agreement (CFA) and
that any future solution should be based on the Oslo
principles. He worried that the military was starting to
carry out offensive operations and claimed that paramilitary
groups were operating with full government knowledge.
Wickremesinghe doubted that Sri Lanka would do more than
abstain in any upcoming International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) vote against Iran. The UNP leader recommended that
the stakeholders in the peace process needed two plans: one
to rescue the CFA and one on how Sri Lanka would emerge from
an upcoming conflict. END SUMMARY.

Greasing the Skids for War
--------------

2. (C) Former Sri Lankan Prime Minister and failed UNP
presidential candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe met with U/S
Burns and Ambassador Lunstead on January 23. U/S Burns
repeated Secretary Rice,s support for the Government of Sri
Lanka (GSL) efforts to return to negotiations and said that
the USG recognizes the difficulty of the current situation.
He underscored the importance of the GSL continuing to hold
the diplomatic and moral high ground as well as exercising
restraint in the face of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam,s (LTTE) provocations. U/S Burns said that Norway and
the United States would make a joint statement following his
meeting with Erik Solheim later that day. The opposition
leader saw both the GSL and the LTTE sliding back to
full-scale war. He believes that the LTTE is carrying out a
long-term plan, albeit interrupted by the 2004 tsunami, to
force a resolution by any means and that the LTTE-enforced
boycott of the November 17 presidential election was designed
to ensure the rise of Rajapaksa and JVP and JHU hardliners.
He believes that any anti-LTTE backlash among the Tamils has
been overshadowed by their resentment of the
administration,s heavy-handed tactics. He thinks that the
LTTE is using a combined intifada and direct attack strategy
to make the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) overreact and galvanize the
Tamil population. He claimed that the large explosion on
January 21 in an LTTE-controlled area of Mannar district was
the work of an SLA deep penetration patrol targeting LTTE
political head S.P. Thamilchelvan (note: high-level
government sources have denied the military had anything to
do with this still-murky incident). Wickremesinghe was
perplexed as to the timing of the attack so close to the
visits of U/S Burns and Norwegian peace envoy Solheim. He
believed that the January 23 attack in Batticaloa that killed
three SLA soldiers was an LTTE reply, a move that would only
harden positions. When asked about the readiness of the SLA,
Wickremesinghe opined that the SLA was weak, having ignored
his advice to restructure over the last several years. He
felt supply lines of the 40,000 troops garrisoning Jaffna
were particularly vulnerable to seaborne attack and that the
GSL was down to one fast attack craft. He believed that
recent bombings were designed to force the military to
re-deploy troops while leaving other areas vulnerable.


3. (C) The January 20 all-party conference was intended to
help President Rajapaksa achieve his "southern consensus."
According to Wickremesinghe, the consensus was that the
President could agree to Oslo as a venue for talks, that the
CFA must be implemented, not re-negotiated, and that the
"principles of Oslo" would be the road map for a negotiated
settlement. Wickremesinghe recommended that the co-chairs and
the Indian government give a hard talk to the GSL prior to
the start of talks. When asked by U/S Burns the way forward
for Sri Lanka, Wickremesinghe replied that there must be two
plans, one to rescue the CFA and a second plan on how to
emerge from a possible new war. He also added that he
thought that U/S Burns' idea of a co-chairs meeting in the

region in February would be a very good idea, assuming that
the CFA was still holding.

800-Pound Guerilla
--------------

4. (C) Wickremesinghe predicts that the overriding theme of
any talks with the LTTE will be section 1.8 of the CFA, the
disarming of paramilitary forces. Although no paramilitary
groups are named in the CFA and the agreement pre-dates the
LTTE-Karuna schism, it is the renegade Colonel Karuna that is
the thorn in the Tiger's paw. Wickremesinghe said that there
were clear links between the SLA and the Karuna faction. He
claimed that the LTTE has sleeper agents in some of Karuna's
cells. When asked if these could be rogue Army operations,
he flatly stated that there are no rogue operations in the
SLA and that the use of paramilitaries is known as high as
the Defense Secretary, the president's brother Gothabaya
Rajapaksa. (Note: the Defense Secretary has denied this to
the Ambassador.)

All Politics is Local
--------------

5. (C) Wickremesinghe told U/S Burns that the two main
parties must work together to move the peace process forward,
but that Rajapaksa could not abandon his hard-line JHU and
JVP partners due to his narrow election victory (180,000
votes) and the UNP claim that 100,000 of their supporters
were excluded from the voter registry. He believes that
Rajapaksa wants local elections as soon as possible so he can
gain advantage from his election victory and wrest some power
away from the JVP.

Iran to the Security Council
--------------

6. (C) U/S Burns shifted the conversation to the USG
position on Iran and asked Wickremesinghe if Sri Lanka would
vote in favor of sending Iran before the Security Council.
Wickremesinghe agreed that Iran had gone too far and needed a
clear message, but he thought that the President was too
beholden to Muslim voters, as well as desperate for
inexpensive oil concessions, to vote in favor of such a
resolution. He added that if Russia and China were to join
the US position, then Sri Lanka might abstain.

COMMENT
--------------

7. (C) Wickremesinghe reflects a growing view concerning
Sri Lanka,s prospects for peace. If his observations (which
in many respects smack of sour grapes),particularly those
concerning the military and the paramilitaries forces, are
true, then President Rajapaksa is facing a complete breakdown
of the Cease Fire Agreement. It will be a test of his
political skill and authority as commander in chief to
enforce a paramilitary stand down as the LTTE continues to
press their provocative attacks.


8. (U) U/S Burns has cleared this message.
LUNSTEAD