COLOMBO, Jan 23, Reuter: State election results in South India may boost a Tamil Separatist Rebellion in Sri Lanka but are unlikely to overturn a 1987 pact between Colombo and Delhi on ending it, Sri Lankan officials and politicians said on Monday.

The implementation of the accord has gone very far now and I don’t think the election result will have any impact on it,” said an official closely involved with the agreement.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Patty inflicted a humiliating defeat on Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress (I) Party in Saturday’s state elections in the South Indian State of Tamil Nadu.

It seized 143 of the 232 seats at stake leaving Congress (I) only 25 with eight results still to be declared.

The 50 million Tamils in the state have common cultural, language and religious links with their cousins in Sri Lanka and Analysts said the liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Rebel group could draw some encouragement from the DMK victory.

The party’s Leader Muthuvel Karunanidhi appeared to back the Tigers, who have rejected the terms of the 1987 accord signed by Gandhi and former Sri Lankan President Junius Jayewardene.

Prabhakarn (The Tigers’ Leader) must be very happy as Karunanidhi is supporter of the Tigers’ cause. But the central government in India is not likely to be swayed very much by pressures from the Tamil Nadu State,” said another official who declined to be identified.

The Chief Minister of Sri Lanka’s northeast provincial council, Annamalai Vartharaja Perumal, agreed that the DMK victory would not have any impact on the implementation of the accord.

The semiautonomous council was set up last month in the northeast, where most Tamils live, as an important element in the implementation of the pact.

Perumal’s Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front, a former militant group, took control of the council winning a majority of seats at the November election.

The Tiger’s boycotted the poll and are continuing an armed struggle to set up an independent state and rid the country of the 50,000 Indian Troops still in the country to enforce the pact.

Perumal welcomed the victory of the DMK and said Karunanidhi was a close friend of his party.

”We hope to get the fullest cooperation from the Tamil Nadu government led Mr. Karunanidhi,” he said. Mr. Karunanidhi extended his sympathy and support for the entire Tamil people. It was not support for anyone Tamil group.”

Rural industrial development Minister Savumiamoorthy Thondaman said the DMK’s victory would not have any impact on Sri Lanka.

Today we have a provincial council in the northeast to look after the affairs of the Tamils. So I don’t think the result will have any impact on the agreement,” said Thondaman, leader of a major trade union of plantation workers of Indian origin.

”The Tamil Nadu government can exercise some influence there (in northeast Sri Lanka) only in the situation of a vacuum if there is no proper administration there,” he said.

On Sri Lanka, Gandhi could be embarrassed by DMK leader Karunanidhi’s open support for the hardline Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Chief Vellupillai Prabhakaran.

Karunanidhi said his new government would review India’s stand on the ethical conflict between Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils and majority Sinhalese.

Karunanidhi would decide on support for the accord Gandhi signed in 1987 with Colombo to end the ethical conflict, after assessing the political fallout from opposition on a national foreign policy issue, said Ramaswamy.

No state government would risk the wrath of the central government by interfering in foreign policy, but a call from Karunanidhi to withdraw Indian Troops was a definite possibility, he added.

Article extracted from this publication >>  January 27, 1989