Tamil Rebels’ Chief Doubts Peace Is Near

NEW DELHI —  The leader of the most powerful Sri Lankan Tamil rebel group said Sunday that a proposed accord to end the island’s bloody civil war is inadequate, casting a shadow on India’s latest effort to broker a peace settlement.

Commenting on two days of talks with Indian officials seeking rebel approval for the plan, the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, said the guerrillas have “reservations and misgivings on several counts.”

He labeled as dim the prospects that an accord ending the four-year-old conflict would be signed by Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi--as guarantor for the rebels--and Sri Lankan President Junius R. Jayewardene in Colombo on Wednesday as announced by the island’s government.

“The proposals are inadequate,” he said. “No accord can be signed in these circumstances.”

Earlier in the day, an official Indian source said “there is a feeling of cautious optimism” that the groups would accept the plan, but he added that “final details have not been tied up.”

More Discussions Today

Prabhakaran said discussions will continue today between Indian officials, the Liberation Tigers and smaller rebel organizations whose leaders flew to New Delhi on Sunday from Madras, the capital of southern Tamil Nadu state, where the groups are based in exile.

Also joining the negotiations was the Tamil United Liberation Front, the outlawed moderate Tamil political organization, and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister N.T. Ramachandran, who is close to the Liberation Tigers.

The Liberation Tigers is the most powerful of the guerrilla groups fighting since 1983 to create in Sri Lanka’s north and east the independent nation of “Eelam” for the island’s Tamil minority. About 6,000 people have been killed.

Prabhakaran and five aides were flown to India by Indian military helicopter Friday from their Jaffna Peninsula stronghold on the island off India’s southern tip. He was to have met with the Indian prime minister, but no meeting has taken place.

His main objection to the plan unveiled by Jayewardene on Thursday centered on the proposed creation of a single council to govern the Northern province, where Tamils are a majority, and the Eastern province, where they are the largest minority.

The guerrillas have demanded a merger of the two areas into a single Tamil homeland, but the government has refused because of the large numbers of Sinhalese Muslims and Buddhists in the Eastern province.

The single provincial council would give the Tamil areas greater autonomy from the Sinhalese-dominated central government, but the plan calls for a referendum in the Eastern province after the panel begins operating to give the other minorities a chance to reject the arrangement.