From News Dispaches TRINCOMALEE: Some 600 Indian soldiers boarded a troop car- soldiers boarded a troop carrier for Madras on July 29 accomplishing a symbolic troop withdrawal that has largely defused a diplomatic crisis between Colombo and New Delhi.

The Sri Lankan President, Ranasinghe Premadasa, had announced on June 1 that he wanted all 45,000 Indian troops out of the country by today, two years after Indian troops arrived to help control separatist Sri Lankan Tamils.

As it became clear that the Indians had no intention of acceding to the demand, and that the smaller Sri Lankan Army had no intention of engaging the Indians, Premadasa stepped back from his demands and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India agreed to this token pullout. Negotiations in Delhi

The Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, Ranjan Wijeratne, left for New Delhi this morning to negotiate a phased withdrawal of the Indian troops, who arrived here under a 1987 Indian Sri Lankan accord that Premadasa then the

Prime Minister, opposed.

India insists that a complete withdrawal be tied to a realistic effort to cede some power to the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka’s Northeastern Province and a guarantee that the minority’s security be protected.

Premadasa dropped demands that the Indians acknowledge him as commander in chief of all forces on the island and immediately cease offensive operations against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, whom the Indians came here to quash in the first place. Premadasa has been engaged in talks with the Tamil Tigers and has asked India not to fight with them. India has not acceded to his request.

Sri Lanka remains under a nationwide curfew that began at midnight Thursday and was extended until 6 am Sunday. It was announced today that the curfew will be re imposed at 6 pm Sunday with no indication of when it will be lifted. Journalists were allowed to travel the roads to the military airport in Colombo to board a flight here.

Premadasa faces a major challenge from a militant Sinhalese group, the People’s Liberation Front, which had called its own two-day curfew beginning today.

600 Troops or 5,000? On Friday , the first full day of the curfew, there were widespread demonstrations and violence attributed to the front. Military officials said today that 153 people

died on Friday in clashes with Government security forces, including eight members of the Tamil Tigers, who were originally trained by India, but are now its bitter foes and have been responsible for most of the over a thousand causalities amongst Indian soldiers. An army officer and a police constable were also reported killed.

Lieut. Gen Amanjit Singh Kalkat, the overall commander of the Indian troops on the island, said in Trincomalee that the 600 troops who left for Madras would be the only contingent to depart until he had further instructions from New Delhi. Those instructions he said, would depend on the outcome of the talks.

He thus contradicted Sri Lanka officials who said on Friday that the Indians had agreed to send 5,000 troops home. He also said that Indian troops remained in full control of security in the Northeastern Province. Sri Lankan troops have been largely confined to barracks ‘here since the Indian troops arrived.

General Kalkat said the Indian Presence had already accomplished great deal. It had enabled the Sri Lankans to conduct provincial, presidential and parliamentary elections, he said, and had put the Tigers under sufficient pressure that they had started to talk to the Colombo Government.

Varadarata Perumal, the chief minister of the Tamil government in Northeastern Province said that he was pleased that President Premadasa had changed his original stand and he insisted that Tamil Representatives be allowed to join the talks in New Delhi, something Indian officials also suggest.

Perumal is a member of an Indian backed Tamil group that decided to lay down its arms and participate in electoral politics. He said that “the troop withdrawal cannot be separated from the security of Tamils and the revolution of powers to the provincial government.”

Article extracted from this publication >>  August 4, 1989