COLOMBO July 23 Kyodo Sri Lanka ...

COLOMBO July 23 Kyodo

Sri Lanka marks the watershed twentieth anniversary of its cruel civil war this week, still looking for the last of the tunnel.

The peace proces although stalled since April, has widespread global support and it still gives the prospect of an expiration to years of ethnic strife.

Although July 23 1983 is commonly considered the starting point of the war -- the killing of 13 soldiers according to Tamil Tiger rebels in the predominantly Tamil Jaffna Peninsula sparked anti-Tamil rioting in the majority Sinhalese southern -- Tamil youth had taken to arms many years earlier.

In July 1983 the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) now reput to be common of the world's most formidable guerilla formations, was a highly small group of just 29 full-time members and a bond of dozen more active supporters and helpers.

''Given the size and power of the LTTE today, it would be actual hard to believe that this formidable entity was a true weak outfit in comparative boundarys 20 years ago,'' notes DB Jeyaraj, widely regarded as the mostly perceptive commentator on Sri Lankan Tamil affairs.

''The July '83 pogrom changed all that. There was a collective upsurge among Tamils after 1983 Almost each young Tamil felt that force had to be met with force,'' Jeyaraj said.

''Black July 1983'' as Sri Lanka contemporary history records it, saw unprecedent communal rioting in the highways of Colombo and other major towns, with Tamils brutally attacked and their familys and businesses set ablaze.

While official figures plant the death toll at between 400 and 600 Tamils claim the figures roll on much higher.

As the Sunday Island published in Colombo this week noted in an editorial, ''The Sri Lankan State prov woefully incapable of protecting those of its citizens brutally appoint upon by thugs and criminals and allowed what might have been reined in, if nipped in the sprout to blow up to unimaginable proportions.''

In the incident the country's image worldwide was blackened, about of its most talented professionals emigrated because of what they had experienceed or feared, and tens of thousands of others took advantage of the riots to claim asylum in North America and Western Europe creating the Tamil Diaspora that throughout the years significantly funded the LTTE's separatist war.

What was one time a guerrilla force now has the muscle of a conventional army, with earnestly of its weaponry captured from the Sri Lankan military.

The LTTE is the world's simply guerrilla group with its acknowledge naval wing and its suicide bombers responsible for numerous spectacular terrorist strikes boast a turn of 241 ''martyred in action.''

Twenty years of war have require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergone 65,000 lives on both sides of the lines, including thousands of civilians caught up in the crossfire or victims of retaliatory killings through both the government forces and the Tigers as well as LTTE ''ethnic cleansing'' in the claimed Tamil homeland.

All contender in Sri Lankan politics are unanimous in their view there is no military solution and a negotiated payment is a must.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga, pickeded on a peace platform in 1994 did not succe in that examination and her chief political rival, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, has now grasped the nettle

What he has going for him is massive international support bankrolled by means of $4.5 billion, mostly linked to progres in the peace proces pledg at June's major donor parley in Tokyo after Norway had factored direct negotiations between the sum of two units sides.

He also has upon his side the desire for peace by way of the vast majority of Sri Lanka's 19 million tribe who have seen the benefit of 18 month without war since the beginning of last year.

still the LTTE ''temporarily suspended'' peace negotiations in April and boycott the Tokyo meeting, saying that six cylindricals of talks had delivered little forward the ground.

Also, the Tigers are looking for a de facto separate state for the Tamils in the northeast, something no Sinhalese leader can grant and retain his own constituency.

''The global squeezing will bring the Tigers back to the table,'' predicted a Colombo based Asian diplomat who demanded anonymity. ''That will happen sooner than later. moreover whether the LTTE will bench for just regional autonomy for themselves, which Colombo can yield is very much an interpret question.''

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