COLOMBO, Nov. 15, Reuter: President Junius Jayewardene has delivered his side of a bargain with India to end four years of ethnic bloodshed in Sri Lanka by pushing through laws to give the Tamil minority limited autonomy.

But it is still anyone’s guess when elections can be held to implement the autonomy plan, ‘both Indian and Sir Lankan officials say. Until then, Sri Lanka remains explosive.

India, with 20,000 troops on the island, is determined to underpin a political settlement by wiping out the Tamil guerrilla threat once and for all.

After crushing the Tamil rebels stronghold of Jaffna in the north, Indian Commanders have shifted their attention to eliminating pockets of heavily armed Tamil Tiger guerrillas along the eastern coastline.

This could take another month, Indian Commanders say. But with the Tigers slipping into the dense jungle the danger of Indian troops getting bogged down in a prolonged counter insurgency operation remains strong, Western diplomats believe.

And with Jayewardene facing a backlash from hardline members of the Sinhalese majority in the South, the situation is still volatile Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, who agreed on the auto my plan with Jayewardene in July, says he was stabbed in the back by the most powerful and extreme of the Tamil rebel groups, the Liberation Tigers of Tami Eelam (LTTE).

“They deliberately set out to wreck the agreement because they ‘were unable or unwilling to make the transition from militancy to the democratic political process,”, Gandhi told Parliament in New Delhi.

He said the Tigers had become beasts “coercing old men, women and children to act as shields, using innocent children as human bombs, murdering prisoners and booby-trapping houses of the people of Jaffna on whose behalf they claim to be fighting”.

India, which has a large Tamil population of its own, had secured from Sri Lanka almost everything that the Tigers had demanded but they had rejected peace, Gandhi said

Now Indian officials here feel there is no alternative but to carry he military offensive tots logical

Conclusion unless the Tigers yield to pressure for a ceasefire and join the political process.

The devolution package will set up a series of provincial councils ‘across the country giving limited self-rule to Tamil dominated areas ‘of the north and east. The Sri Lankan government sees it as the last chance for peace.

Legislation clearing the way for the councils was approved by Parliament by the required two thirds majorities on Thursday.

But Jayewardene faced a storm of violent protest from Sinhalese radicals and criticism from the main opposition freedom party. It said the 81yearold President had turned Sri Lanka into a pawn of India.

Freedom Party Parliamentary leader Anura Bandaranatke said the autonomy deal would split the country. It would give the Tamils, who make up just 13 per cent of the population. 30 percent of the land and 60 percent of its coastline, he declared.

Hardline Buddhist students and monks staged demonstrations and hunger strikes, asserting that Buddhism, the country’s main religion, was under threat from the Hindu Tamils.

At least 150 people died across Sri Lanka this week as Parliament debated the controversial autonomy legislation.

Police pinned responsibility for some of the bloodshed on an underground Sinhalese marxist group opposed to the autonomy plan, Police said’ People’s Liberation Front detonated a car bomb that killed 32 people and wounded 106 in Colombo last Monday.

The Front, banned after antifamily riots in 1983, has dubbed Jayewardene @ traitor and was blamed for a grenade attack against him in August.

Plans for an interim Tamil dominated council for the north and east have been dropped after the Tigers rejected its proposed composition, leaving the timetable for implementing the autonomy plan in doubt.

Article extracted from this publication >>  November 20, 1987