{"id":63100,"date":"2017-02-05T16:04:22","date_gmt":"2017-02-05T23:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=63100"},"modified":"2017-02-05T16:04:31","modified_gmt":"2017-02-05T23:04:31","slug":"i-was-forced-into-a-deal-with-india-jayewardene-told-u-s-envoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/02\/05\/i-was-forced-into-a-deal-with-india-jayewardene-told-u-s-envoy\/","title":{"rendered":"I was forced into a deal with India, Jayewardene told U.S. envoy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amit Baruah<\/a>\u00a0Courtesy The Hindu<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
\u00a0Former Sri Lanka President claimed his troops refused to take Jaffna, reveal declassified papers<\/div>\n
\n

Sri Lanka was forced into making a deal with India as its own armed forces had twice refused to take Jaffna\u201d, then President J.R. Jayewardene has been quoted as saying in a declassified document, nearly 30 years after the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was deployed in the island nation.<\/p>\n

Jayewardene told visiting American diplomat Peter Galbraith that he had twice ordered his troops to take Jaffna \u2014 burn the place to the ground\u201d \u2014 and they had talked him out of it on grounds of unacceptably high casualties.<\/p>\n

A little over 1,200 Indian soldiers died in IPKF operations against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in northern and eastern Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1990. In May 1991, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who had signed the July 1987 peace deal with Jayewardene, was assassinated by the LTTE.<\/p>\n


\nRajiv Gandhi and Jayewardene sign the India-Sri Lanka accord in Colombo in July 1987. \u2013 Photo: The Hindu Archives \u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In response to significant promises of devolution of powers to the Tamil minority and recognition of Tamil as an official language, India agreed to provide military assistance \u2014 the IPKF \u2014 to ensure peace according to the 1987 Gandhi-Jayewardene accord.<\/p>\n

\u2018A mad fellow\u2019<\/h2>\n

He [Mr. Jayewardene] made clear that he shared the GOI\u2019S [Government of India\u2019s] implacable hostility toward Prabakaran, calling the LTTE leader \u2018a mad fellow\u2019, \u201d a declassified CIA document said about the February 1988 conversation.<\/p>\n

He stressed, though without obvious bitterness, that none of his outside friends would help him, so he had no choice but to make a deal with India,\u201d the CIA document read.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the then President opened up to Mr. Galbraith and said he would hold elections in the Tamil-populated northern and eastern provinces in Sri Lanka. Polls were finally held in November 1988.<\/p>\n

Mr. Galbraith also provides an insight into the relations between the IPKF and the Sri Lankan Army (SLA), and the ground situation in the Jaffna peninsula after being flown to the area during his visit.<\/p>\n

\u2026the IPKF and the Sri Lankan forces are getting on well together, and\u2026the situation in Jaffna, while still far from normal, is gradually improving,\u201d the American diplomat said in an assessment.<\/p>\n

An SLA officer, Brigadier Jayaratne, is quoted in the memo as saying: The IPKF is doing a jolly good job in Jaffna.\u201d He added that the SLA and the Indian troops were getting along famously, like a house on fire.<\/p>\n

The document recounted that the Indian officers were warm and responsive\u201d in their interaction with the American visitors, which included Mr. Galbraith and the then U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes<\/h2>\n

It appears that the Americans also played a behind-the-scenes role in ensuring channels of communication between President Jayewardene and Prime Minister Gandhi, a second declassified CIA document said.<\/p>\n

In 1986, Jayewardene held a very negative view of India given that New Delhi had been training Tamil insurgents as he conveyed to visiting U.S. Senator Charles H. Percy. I am a very peaceful man. But India\u2019s role in this [ethnic] matter is reprehensible and the Indians have to be held responsible for their actions.\u201d Percy, who carried a letter from U.S. President Ronald Reagan to Jayewardene, offered to be of assistance in conveying any message\u201d from the Sri Lankan President to Rajiv Gandhi.<\/p>\n

Indian \u2018intervention\u2019<\/h2>\n

Interestingly, a third CIA intelligence assessment of September 1986 stated that India was rapidly expanding\u201d its armed forces to intervene\u201d in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

India, it said, was improving its ability to deploy airborne troops. The paratroopers probably would try to seize an airfield so that reinforcements could be brought in by air. U.S. defence attach\u00e9 sources report the Army and Air Force practised such an operation late last year [1985] at Trivandrum, with the assault force receiving offshore fire support from Navy ships.\u201d Trivandrum, the memo argued, resembled Colombo in topography.<\/p>\n

In the CIA\u2019s assessment, India would intervene in Sri Lanka in two scenarios \u2014 one, if the government collapsed and, the other, if Tamil insurgents established a separate State.<\/p>\n

In our view, an Indian intervention would most likely come [exactly what happened in 1987], as in 1971 [to deal with Marxist insurgents] following a request from Colombo to help in restoring internal order,\u201d the assessment said.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the CIA believed that the poorly trained Sri Lankan Army would offer token resistance and opposition to a prolonged\u201d Indian intervention would come from Tamil and, possibly, Sinhala insurgents.<\/p>\n

In a prescient observation, the memo concluded: If New Delhi continues to oppose a separate Tamil state, we believe Tamil insurgents would resist the Indians as they now do the Sinhalese.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amit Baruah\u00a0Courtesy The Hindu \u00a0Former Sri Lanka President claimed his troops refused to take Jaffna, reveal declassified papers Sri Lanka was forced into making a deal with India as its own armed forces had twice refused to take Jaffna\u201d, then President J.R. Jayewardene has been quoted as saying in a declassified document, nearly 30 years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}