India Troops Enter Sri Lanka After Accord : Force to Help Control Tamil Guerrilla Area

Fifteen hundred Indian troops moved into the Jaffna Peninsula, a Tamil rebel stronghold on the northern tip of Sri Lanka, early today only hours after Indian and Sri Lankan leaders signed a cooperation agreement aimed at ending the island nation’s bloody ethnic war.

Indian and Sri Lankan sources said the troops were flown at the request of Sri Lankan President Junius R. Jayewardene. The Indian force is to help control the Tamil area in the crucial five-day period in which the rebels, involved in a four-year conflict with government forces in which more than 5,000 have died, are to surrender their weapons under terms of the agreement signed in Colombo on Wednesday afternoon.

An Indian source said another larger contingent of troops is on its way to the island on three ships. It is the first time that Indian troops, part of one of the world’s largest armies, have been used on foreign soil since the 1971 Bangladesh war.

Leaders’ Support Slips

The military intervention, in which Sri Lankan sources said Indian troops will engage in joint patrols with Sri Lankan forces, comes at a time when both Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan leader Jayewardene’s public support has been slipping.

The two leaders signed the agreement expanding India’s role as a peacekeeper and opening the door to the Indian military intervention as fires set by rioting protesters in Colombo blazed in the distance.

Reaction to the agreement among the Sinhalese majority population has been bitter. More than 35 persons have been killed in two days of rioting.

“We have reached an agreement,” Gandhi said after his arrival Wednesday in the tense capital city, still under curfew as a second day of rioting by foes of the pact claimed 15 more lives. “It is a momentous event in the history of our two countries. It heralds peace.”

As Gandhi spoke at a morning reception in the ceremonial palace in the deserted center of the city, four miles away thousands of rioting Sinhalese battled with police on Galle Road, the coastal highway leading into the city from the south.

The mostly Buddhist demonstrators, including hundreds of saffron-robed monks, set fire to government buildings and some Tamil-owned businesses. After two police officers were killed Wednesday, army units had moved in with tear-gas dispensing helicopters, some of which had been used earlier to transport Gandhi and his entourage to the city.

At one point, the state radio network broadcast a warning that curfew violators would be shot on sight. However, most army units fired their weapons in the air.

“If we tried to enforce curfew we would have to kill more people,” said one Sri Lanka army lieutenant colonel, who wore a battle campaign medal from the civil war against the Tamil rebels in the north of the island. “That would only aggravate the situation.”

The protesters feel that the agreement grants Tamil militants too many concessions, and they question India’s motives as a peacemaker. Although the Buddhist Sinhalese constitute about 73% of the island’s 16 million residents, and the Tamils only about 13%, the Sinhalese feel that they are the minority--mainly because 55 million Tamils live across the Palk Straits in India’s Tamil Nadu state.

The agreement that Gandhi and Jayewardene signed called for a cease-fire within 48 hours, the return of Sri Lankan military forces to positions held before a successful offensive against Tamil strongholds launched in May and the surrender of all weapons by Tamil rebel groups within five days.

It establishes India as a guarantor that the terms will be honored by both the Sri Lankan government and Tamil rebel groups.

By Wednesday, however, the main Tamil fighting group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, still had not given its assent, although Gandhi said that progress was made during discussions with their leaders late Tuesday.

The agreement greatly enlarges India’s role in Sri Lanka’s affairs, especially since it provided for the use of Indian troops as a “peacekeeping force.”

In addition, under the terms of the agreement, Sri Lanka will permit Indian military observer groups to monitor the proposed cease-fire, Indian Red Cross officials to supervise the surrender of weapons by Tamil insurgents and Indian election officials to check the fairness of a proposed referendum to create a province with a Tamil majority.

Also, India offered to help train Sri Lankan military forces and to patrol the Palk Straits separating the two countries with Indian navy vessels in search of Tamil rebel boats.

In a region where India, with its one-million strong army and sophisticated air force and navy, is often viewed by its neighbors as an expansionist power, the military provisions are controversial.

Indian officials, who have not played a similar role since their intervention in the East Pakistan civil war in 1971--resulting in the creation of the new nation of Bangladesh--were obviously pleased.

“How do you like Indian diplomacy in action?” said one senior Indian diplomat, smiling, after a joint press conference by Gandhi, 44, and Jayewardene, 80.

“I think President Jayewardene has shown tremendous courage and statesmanship in coming forward with these proposals,” Gandhi said at the press conference.

However, in the brick-strewn streets on the periphery of Colombo, where plumes of black smoke made the city seem surrounded by trouble, the attitude toward Gandhi and Jayewardene was much more hostile.

“Gandhi can’t even rule his own country,” said Priyantha Kapuwatte, 22, referring to the Indian prime minister’s mounting political problems at home. “Why should he come here and try to rule ours?”

“It is not peace he is after,” said another man, a Sinhalese government worker. “He is trying to take over our country and he is being helped by our president.”

Since the ethnic war began four years ago, about 5,000 people have been killed in the bitter fighting, which has included massacres of civilians by both sides.

The conflict began as a campaign by the mostly Hindu Tamil minority to assert its rights and to fight discrimination by the Sinhalese majority. However, the movement evolved into a full-scale civil war with the Tamils, led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, demanding a separate homeland.

The agreement signed Wednesday falls far short of granting that demand. However, it does create a single Tamil-majority province in the mainly Tamil north and northeast of island.

It also calls for a referendum to be held before December to determine whether residents of the northeast area want to join the majority Tamil province, although it does permit the president to postpone the referendum at his discretion.

According to Gandhi, who spent 90 minutes Tuesday night with Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabakaran, the Tamil rebels still are not ready to endorse the peace agreement.

“We talked and he raised some problems regarding Tamil security,” said Gandhi. “They are worried about their security. But we are still talking with them and we feel they will come around.”

Several Tamil rebel groups and the Tamil United Liberation Front, an offshoot of a banned Tamil political party, have endorsed the agreement.