Harini mentioned this Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact that was signed between the Sinhalese Prime Minister and the Tamil leader, Mr. Chelvanayagam, in 1957. It was abrogated purely by Sinhalese leaders.
When I was here last Monday, a witness clearly said the Buddhist monks protested the pact, and it was abrogated. History repeated itself. Every time the Tamil parties wanted to have peace, wanted to have some sort of autonomy, much less than the federal set-up in the fifties and sixties and seventies, it was abrogated. Pacts were signed. Unilaterally it was broken by the Sinhalese leadership. Why? Because the opposition party.... You mentioned the two parties, the two key components, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the United National Party. If one party comes to an agreement, the other party opposes it.
So that's the history, a bitter history, in Sri Lanka.
Very recently, in 2002, when the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government were brought to a ceasefire by many international players, the LTTE came down with a proposal called ISGA, Interim Self-Governing Authority. The Tamil diaspora largely contributed to designing the package. It was much less than a separate state, but none of the Sinhalese actors, including the government then in power, looked at it. They didn't want to look at it; they didn't want to talk about it.
This is the sad history of Sri Lanka. That's what we are saying. Unless there is a lot of pressure from the outside world, from countries like Canada, America, and other countries with some sort of strong measures such as diplomatic sanctions and a travel embargo or a trade embargo, whatever it is, it will be very hard to find peace in Sri Lanka. This is the sad history of Sri Lanka.