Sri Lanka: Another Try for a Truce

Last July the Sri Lankan government and the island’s militant minority, known as the Tamils, agreed to call a truce to their bloody three-year-old civil war. But the agreement quickly broke down, and hundreds have died in renewed fighting over the past ten weeks. Last week an umbrella group representing the four Tamil guerrilla factions agreed to a new cease-fire that could lead to fresh talks on Tamil demands for self-rule.

At one time the Tamils wanted to set up their own independent nation within Sri Lanka. Now they have softened this demand, while still seeking self government for those areas of the island in the north and the east where they constitute a majority. The nearly two million Tamils in these regions, most of them Hindu, complain of persecution at the hands of the country’s 12 million Sinhalese, who are predominantly Buddhist. The Tamils’ main hope for the future now rests with Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who helped arrange the latest cease-fire. Tamil leaders are pressing Gandhi to persuade Sri Lankan President Junius Jayewardene to grant them substantial autonomy, and thus put an end to the bloody conflict.