BANGALORE, India, Nov. 15: Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi today offered new proposals to end the Tamil rebellion in Sri Lanka, authorities sources told Reuters.

They said Gandhi had presented the ideas to Sri Lanka President Junius Jayewardene on the basis of suggestions from Tamil militant leaders in Southern India.

The main point of issue, they said, was the rebels’ demand for a merger of Sri Lanka’s Tamil dominated Northern Province with its partly Tamil eastern region, a claim firmly ruled out by the Colombo government.

They said Jayewardene had produced detailed maps showing the ethnic balance in the disputed areas between Tamils, Moslems and the majority Sinhalese, There had been discussion about devolution of power, especially over land settlement and law and order, to the provinces.

The sources confirmed a statement by an Indian government spokesman, “The talks were friendly and cordial and will continue at all levels”, but declined to give any details.

However, B.B.C. reported that Tamil tigers had rejected the proposals. The Tamil leaders announced rejection at Madras airport after returning from Bangalore.

Sri Lanka delegates were optimistic aboeventual solution after today’s meeting but diplomatic sources told Reuters not to expect a final decision in Bangalore.

The talks began as soon as Jayewardene arrive dhere for tomorrow’s seven nation South Asian Summit. He and Gandhi met privately for about 20 minutes and continued their talks over a working lunch with their Foreign Ministers.

The Indian spokesman said the ministers and officials would meet again tonight and the two leader’s tomorrow morning, Analysts took this as a hopeful sign, as previous talks on the Tamil issue were reported to have made little headway.

Jayewardene has put forward a peace plan based on devolution of power to Sri Lanka’s nine provinces. Gandhi, whose population includes 50 million Tamils, has called it a fairly good basis for negotiation.

Up to now the militants have rejected it out of hand, and Indian has sought some further concession from Jayewardene to bring them to the conference table.

India’s Tamil militants are under strict surveillance and after the airport talks Jayewardene drove into Bangalore.

The seven member states have so far identified 12 areas for cooperation such as agriculture, health and telecommunications. But India’s hopes of coordinating trade and “core areas of economic activity have been coolly received by its partners.

 Still further away is any idea of a regional political role for SAARC except at the bilateral level, as in the Gandhi Jayewardene talks.

Even agreement on a definition’ of “terrorism” an essential prelude to stamping it out in the region, has so far proved beyond the seven countries, although the Indian government spokesman today sharply denied a journalist’s suggestion that the issue was at an impasse.

‘SAARC’s decisions must be by consensus and analysts believe Indo Pakistani disputes over nuclear and other armaments. Cross border infiltration and the ownership of Kashmir virtually rule out unanimity on polices issues.

A senior Maldivian official, noting that his country’s population was more than 4,000 times smaller than India’s told Reuters he believed a political role for SAARC was decades away.

Article extracted from this publication >> November 21, 1986