COLOMBO, Nov. 10, Reuters: A working lunch next Saturday could be crucial in solving the three year Tamil insurgency which has cost4,500 lives on this Indian Ocean Island, Sri Lankan officials said today.

Sri Lankan President Junius Jayewardene will meet Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi over lunch in the South Indian city of Bangalore to discuss how to protect the rights of minority Tamils Without conceding the rebel demand for a separate state.

Police in Madras, capital of India’s southern Tamil Nadu state, swooped on Tamil| militants last Saturday and disarmed them, in a move seen as preparing the ground for the lunch.

“It was the minimum India could do,” a senior Sri Lankan Official told Reuters. “Jayewardene’s meeting with Gandhi will certainly have more meaning now”. But he added, “The terrorists must stop believing that there is a military solution available to them”,

‘And noting that rebel leaders are regarded as political refugees in South India, where some 50 million ethnic Tamils. Live, he said it ‘Was up to India to convince them Of this,

India must also persuade them to “abandon the wholly unreasonable demand for amalgamating the (Tamil majority) northern province with the (Tamil minority) eastern province”, he said, referring to one of the rebels’ key demands.

Sri Lanka’s view is that there Can be little change from the peace proposals to devolve power to the provinces already made by the government.

“Jayewardene has gone as far as any President can now or in the future,” the senior official said.

But an authoritative Indian source here took a different view. “Disarming the militants was a maximum, not a minimum”, he said. “Now it is up to Jayewardene to make the concession which will bring the guerrillas to the negotiating table”.

‘Asked what this might be, he restated the demand for a “Quasi federal” Tamil Homeland, to be created by rezoning parts of the disputed eastern province and adding them to the north

In an atmosphere of mutual suspicion, Sri Lanka believes India tacitly favours the Tamils for fear of political unrest in Tamil Nadu and that if Colombo tried to end the insurgency by force, New Delhi would intervene militarily, But the Indian source flatly ruled out intervention. “I would rate the chance of this as nil in present circumstances”, he said.

Restating their official positions, neither side seemed in the mood for compromise, although one official told Reuters this might be because they did not know what the leaders had in mind for their lunch in Bangalore.

Article extracted from this publication >> November 14, 1986