There is a big one and a few smaller ones. The ground is mined and littered with boobytraps and peacetraps.
The dramatis personae have been going round and round the mulberry bush, atleast since the early eighties. From all indications available so far, they may go round for some more time - maybe a few months or even years.
For all its public stand-offish attitude and reiteration that Sri Lanka should solve this problem all by itself, New Delhi may be sucked into the vortex of events by their sheer momentum. Already New Delhi has had the mortification of its foreign policy being enunciated, or at least, receiving some open inputs into what should be its policy, by a constituent political party of the ruling alliance at the centre.
A few other constituent parties of the alliance are openly advocating the bifurcation of the southern island nation to achieve "lasting peace", whereas the Indian Government is swearing day in and day out by the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Sri Lanka.
The tamasha is continuing where the individual parties are openly claiming - and New Delhi conceding - their right to speak differently inside and outside the Council of Ministers.
May be this is a stage in the evolution of coalition dharma!
Be that as it may, New Delhi has at least the gratification that Washington is openly criticising the LTTE for its continuing terrorism and is openly supporting the Indian and Norwegian efforts for a peaceful solution to the conflict which has cost thousands of lives on both sides of the Sri Lankan ethnic divide. On the one hand, the danger of an imminent fall of Jaffna back into the rebel hands has passed, and, on the other, the LTTE would have realized by this time that it will be fully stretching its logistics and exposing its flanks in the peninsular planes if it persists in its dramatic capture of Jaffna.
President Chandrika Kumaratunge is already on record that the loss of Jaffna to the LTTE will mean the de facto arrival of Eelam. However she is also aware, as the LTTE is, that world opinion, more so, India, will not allow any de jure UDI.
The ruling people's alliance and its opposition, the United National Party, are going round and round, discussing the President's five year old devolution package. The Sinhala parties on the one side and the non-LTTE Tamil and Muslim parties on the other side are going round another another bush regarding the same package. The Sinhala Buddhist clergy is going round all by itself chanting "No concession".
It is time all of them hammer out a consensus among themselves before the ring master Norway, ably aided (?) by India, enters the ring. The difference being the ring master will have no whip to crack but will have to orally persuade both sides to "reach an agreement".
What kind of an agreement will that be?
Any devolution package has to be approved by Parliament with two-thirds majority of members voting for it.
This is simply impossible under the present 1978 Constitution, masterminded by that "old fox" late JR Jayawardene. Full co-operation among the Sinhala and Tamil parties in Parliament is a sine qua non for passage of any package. It will still have to be approved by a public referendum for which the Sinhala Buddhist clergy will have to see the writing on the wall and co-operate.
Meanwhile, here we go round the Sri Lankan mulberry bush ......

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