Having seen the above exchange of letters on the militant Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam in Sri Lanka, I wish to add my own perspective from my experience and observations of the Sri Lanka conflict in order to bring greater clarity, if I may.

Such conflicts are by no means unique to the country after centuries of colonial rule and now developing sustainable nationhood. Unfortunately, political wisdom and mutual accommodation have been substituted with political expediency with disastrous consequences for all, mostly for the Tamils.

The political problem started with the introduction of discriminatory linguistic and religious legislation which clearly favoured the majority Sinhalese to the detriment of the Tamil minority. This impacted negatively the social and economic spheres of the Tamils but it has, over time, ruined all communities, and finally the entire country. All attempts, including signed agreements, at trying to obtain political redress using non-violent Gandhian methods from 1956 to 1976 simply failed against majority intransigence.

Protests spearheaded by Tamil politicians were beaten down ruthlessly by politically-motivated street mobs with active connivance of the police and armed services which over time came to be dominated by the Sinhalese. The Tamils faced repeated race riots, pogroms and finally the holocaust of 1983.

No wonder then former prime minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew persistently reminded his citizens not to go down the road taken by Sri Lanka. And it is no surprise that Sri Lanka, from being perhaps the most prosperous in the region after WWII, now finds itself in dire straits while Singapore is one of the most better off by comparison.

The rise of the LTTE, as stated by P Ramasamy , is the direct result of the failure to politically accommodate the Tamils. The LTTE's violence to maintain the security of the Tamils against vicious state violence unleashed from 1983 to 2001 against the Tamils has resulted in a horrific war with disastrous consequences for all.

This led the LTTE to the call for a separate state, finally settling on a mutually-agreed federal structure with the help of Norwegian facilitation but which has been abandoned unilaterally by the new Sri Lankan president for a return to the status quo ante of a unitary state.

The upcoming peace talks in Geneva on the full implementation of a cease-fire agreement (which had previously run into serious problems) is being watched with great interest by all those interested prior to an eventual peaceful and sustainable resolution of the conflict.