In Sri Lankan crisis, rebels lie low

With its clean cafes, boisterous markets, and law-abiding drivers, it's easy to forget that this is a town that terror built.

Headquarters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) - perhaps the most highly trained and motivated militant group in the world - Kilinochchi is at the heart of a 20-year brutal war that has killed 65,000, and created an ethnic Tamil homeland that is fully under LTTE control.

But while the Tamil Tigers are famous for teaching the Palestinian Liberation Organization and other militant groups the deadly technique of suicide bombing, today the Tigers are trying to change their image and negotiate their way to a lasting peace. With much at stake in the peace process - including $4.5 billion in promised aid that was tied to the talks - the rebel group appears to have chosen to wait out the government's recent political crisis rather than break a promising cease-fire.

"I don't think the LTTE wants to provoke a return to hostilities," says Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo. "In 20 months, they have built up legitimacy that they don't want to lose."

Late last week, international mediators suspended peace talks between the Tamil Tigers and the government. The Norwegian brokers said the Sri Lankan government needed to decide who was in charge of the talks as a political crisis enters its third week between the president and prime minister. The two rivals made progress toward reconciliation on Saturday, as President Chandrika Kumaratunga offered to share control of the Defense Ministry with the prime minister.

"We will go home and wait," said Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgesen, during this weekend's trip to Colombo. "We have no intention of abandoning the peace process, but there are limits to what we can do."

With the politically dominant Sinhalese in disarray, the Tamil minority appears to be united - and eerily quiet.

Six months after an audacious daylight attack on the Colombo International Airport, the Tamil Tigers declared a unilateral cease-fire in December 2001. Today, they are trying to keep 20 months of peace talks on track, mostly by doing nothing at all.

But memories of the Tigers' past military exploits are difficult for the region to forget. Since the late 1980s, the Tigers have committed a spate of civil terror that remains unmatched, including:

• Nearly 200 suicide bomb attacks, including an October 1997 suicide truck-bomb attack on Colombo's World Trade Center, killing 18 people.

• Assassinations, including the 1991 suicide blast that killed Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and the 1993 attack on Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa.

• A 1999 assassination attempt on President Kumaratung, who lost an eye in the attack.

Tamils - primarily Hindu - say their troubles began in 1957, after the country's parliament passed a raft of laws that favored the Sinhalese majority, making Sinhala the national language, and Buddhism the state religion. In 1975, the LTTE formed to demand a separate state. While the Tigers have recently said they would settle for an "interim self-governing authority," some observers say they will never yield until they have full control of what they consider the traditional Tamil homeland.

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