India to Sign Tamil Pact Despite Protests

Despite opposition from Tamil rebel leaders, India will proceed with plans to sign, as “guarantor,” an agreement to end the five-year-old ethnic war in Sri Lanka, Indian officials said Monday.

At the same time, according to Indian news agency reports, the police in Sri Lanka used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse several thousand demonstrators protesting the agreement.

Tamil leaders, including Velupillai Prabhakaran of the so-called Liberation Tigers, have objected to provisions of the proposed peace agreement that call for surrendering arms and requiring Tamil rule to be submitted to a referendum in one province of Sri Lanka.

Two Days of Talks

However, after two days of negotiating with the rebels here in the Indian capital, the Indians announced Monday that they will proceed as planned, with or without rebel approval, on the agreement that was worked out after months of talks between the governments of India and Sri Lanka.

A spokesman said Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi will travel to Sri Lanka on Wednesday and meet with President Junius R. Jayewardene before signing the agreement, which establishes India as the enforcer and monitor.

Sri Lanka’s principal Buddhist groups have called for a general strike Wednesday to coincide with Gandhi’s arrival. Most members of Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority are Buddhists, but Hinduism predominates among the Tamils, as it does in India.

The demonstration broken up by the police Monday involved more than 3,500 people and took place in Amparai, a township outside Colombo, the capital. The police fired tear gas canisters and charged the demonstrators, who were led by about 800 Buddhist monks. Dozens of people were reportedly injured.

The agreement comes at a time when Gandhi’s popularity is at an all-time low, and it is seen as a way for him to re-establish his leadership and win support in the populous states of southern India where the Tamil issue is important.

The agreement provides for increased regional autonomy for Tamil populations in north and northeast Sri Lanka, the island off southern India that until 1972 was known as Ceylon.

For five years, rebels of the minority Tamil population, concentrated in the northern third of the island, have fought with government troops in an effort to achieve independence from the majority Sinhalese population. More than 5,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

The key new factor in the peace plan is India’s role as guarantor, charged with seeing that both sides honor the agreement. Tamil rebels and the Sri Lanka government have both interpreted this provision as meaning that India will intervene, militarily if necessary, to preserve peace.

“India is bound to assist Sri Lanka . . . with military force if necessary,” Lalith Athulathmudali, Sri Lanka’s minister of national security, told a reporter Monday.

This statement by Athulathmudali, who is regarded as the main architect of Sri Lankan policy during the insurgency, reflected a willingness to surrender a measure of sovereignty. Not long ago, when India flew emergency food supplies into Sri Lanka, the Sri Lankan government objected on grounds that this was a violation of its territory.

In the interview Monday, Athulathmudali for the first time disclosed specific provisions of the agreement. He said it recognizes the Tamils as the “preponderant ethnic community” of the northern and northeastern provinces that would be combined to form a majority Tamil province.

“The northern and eastern provinces as presently constituted,” he said, “will have one provincial council, one governor, one chief minister, one board of ministers. That will be set up on or before Dec. 31, 1987.”

Details Disclosed

He said the rebels would be required to begin surrendering their arms within a week after the agreement is signed. After a year, a referendum would be held in the eastern section of the new province to determine whether the population agrees to Tamil rule.

These are the two key elements opposed by Tamil rebel groups, which include the powerful Liberation Tigers headed by Prabhakaran.

“We have reservations and misgivings on several counts,” Prabhakaran was quoted as saying Sunday night.

Nevertheless, several other important Tamil groups, including the Tamil United Liberation Front, the outlawed Tamil political arm, and several smaller rebel groups support the agreement.

Also pushing for approval is M.G. Ramachandran, the chief minister of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where most of the rebel groups have political offices.