Sri Lanka Truce Raises Peace Hopes : Asia: Some are skeptical rebels will accept power-sharing plan floated in 1950s. But others say both sides are ready to end war.

Two weeks before Pope John Paul II is scheduled to visit, the enemies in Sri Lanka’s civil war have agreed to a truce, to begin Sunday, that President Chandrika Kumaratunga said Friday could help stanch the bloodshed for good.

“I pray that this will be the dawn of a new era of peace for our long-suffering nation,” Kumaratunga said as she opened a session of her island nation’s Parliament. Negotiations with the Tamil rebels will resume in mid-month, she said.

Lawmakers from her governing People’s Alliance coalition happily thumped their desks at her announcement of a “cessation of hostilities,” the closest Sri Lanka has come to domestic tranquillity in 4 1/2 years. But even allies expressed prudence when asked what it portended.

“It is a modest step forward toward building a conducive atmosphere for the wider peace initiative,” Neelan Tiruchelvam, a lawmaker from Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority who is a presidential confidant, said in a telephone interview.

The agreement to suspend fighting in the 11-year-old civil war, one of the world’s longest-running ethnic conflicts and one in which more than 30,000 people have died, was forged at negotiations Tuesday between a five-member government team and leaders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the rebel stronghold of Jaffna.

Government officials said Kumaratunga and Tigers chief Vellupillai Prabhakaran later exchanged signed communications to put their seal on the accord, the United News of India reported.

The suspension of fighting is expected to allow large numbers of Catholics to travel south from the Jaffna peninsula to attend the visit of John Paul, who will visit Colombo, the capital city, Jan. 20-21. The government and the rebels want calm to prevail during the pontiff’s stay, when he will beatify 17th-Century missionary Joseph Vaz, who cared for Catholics persecuted by Protestant Dutch officials.

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In 1983, the Tigers began their struggle to carve out a separate homeland for the Tamils in Sri Lanka’s north and east. Kumaratunga, elected president in November on a promise to seek a negotiated peace, told Parliament that she will propose a new power-sharing arrangement when talks resume a week from today.

“We shall shortly present to the (Tigers) a package of proposals with regard to the devolution of power,” she said. “This will form the basis of a negotiated settlement.”

However, some observers said Kumaratunga’s explanation that the package would parallel a plan formulated by her father in the 1950s meant it might not satisfy many Tamils today. Some members of Sri Lanka’s Buddhist Sinhalese majority even questioned the Tigers’ commitment to the truce.

“We do not have any faith in the undertaking of terrorists,” said Harishchandra Wijayatunga, who opposed Kumaratunga in the presidential race on a hard-line nationalist platform.

Sri Lanka’s last prolonged cease-fire that coincided with negotiations lasted from April, 1989, to June, 1990. One Colombo newspaper, the Island, pointedly recalled Friday that “under the pretext of peace talks with the then government, the (Tigers) regrouped itself and replenished its depleted stocks of arms with which they launched a massive attack on the government security forces.”

True enough, said Lakshman Gunasekara, news editor of the Sunday Observer, another Colombo newspaper. But Kumaratunga, who won broad support from Sinhalese and Tamils in the Nov. 9 election, has an unprecedented “strong political base,” the editor said.

What’s more, human rights lawyer Kalyananda Tiranagama added, “the Tamils also desperately want peace, as they are fed up with the conflict.”

On Tuesday, as the sides met for the first time since talks were suspended after the Oct. 24 assassination of an opposition presidential candidate, they agreed on an $816-million plan to help rebuild the shattered north.

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Kumaratunga’s father, Prime Minister Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, had reached a deal with a Tamil leader that foresaw regional autonomy in the north and east as a way to satisfy Tamil demands for greater self-rule. But opposition from the Buddhist clergy and Sinhalese hard-liners made him renege. In 1959, Bandaranaike was assassinated by a Buddhist monk.

Until now, Prabhakaran and his men have reportedly refused to even discuss a political settlement, so their reaction to Kumaratunga’s proposal will be watched closely.

Tamils, who are predominantly Hindu, make up 18% of Sri Lanka’s 17 million people. They claim that they are discriminated against by the Sinhalese, who dominate the government, courts, military apparatus and media.

The truce was timed to go into effect on the 96th anniversary of Bandaranaike’s birth. The government, the Tigers and officials from Norway and the Netherlands will serve on committees to help monitor any violations, Kumaratunga said.