Sri Lanka monk says no peace until top rebel dead

By Simon Gardner

COLOMBO (Reuters) – A Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka, who heads
a religious party opposed to a Tamil homeland in the north and
east, says the country would be better off if the reclusive
rebel leader of the Tamil Tigers were dead.

Venerable Ellawala Medhananda, head of the National
Heritage Party, or Jathika Hela Urumaya, said the government
should be prepared to fight the rebels, led by Velupillai
Prabhakaran, to the bitter end if peace talks in Switzerland
next week fail.

“If Prabhakaran is dead, Sri Lanka is a better place,” he
told Reuters in an interview at a Buddhist center in the
island’s capital, Colombo. “He is the stumbling block to the
peace process. We should take his influence out of society.”

Medhanadna, a political ally of President Mahinda
Rajapakse, said his sentiment did not contradict the tenets of
peace and harmony for which Buddhism is known the world over.

“Even Buddhist monks can act in self-defense,” said the
69-year-old, who became a monk at the age of 12 and enjoys a
revered status in Sri Lanka, like other Buddhist monks.

“Buddhist monks (elsewhere) have learned fighting
techniques like Kung Fu for their self defense. Therefore
fighting for self defense is not against Buddhist principles,”
said Medhananda, wearing a saffron robe, glasses and
close-cropped hair.

A policeman carrying an automatic rifle stood guard near a
shrine and a sacred Buddhist Bo tree in a courtyard outside to
protect the outspoken MP.

“We now face a terrorist problem. They are attacking us, so
why can’t we fight in self-defence?”

Like Rajapakse’s former-militant Marxist allies, the
Sinhalese nationalist JHU rejects the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam’s (LTTE) calls for a separate homeland for minority
Tamils in the north and east, and is opposed to rebel autonomy
or separation from the island’s Buddhist-majority south.

Medhananda does not expect to see much progress at talks in
Switzerland on February 22-23, seen by many as a last chance to
avoid a slide back to a civil war that killed more than 64,000
people up until a 2002 truce.

“I believe in a negotiated settlement, but unfortunately
the LTTE doesn’t,” he said in his native Sinhala through a
translator. “If they are willing to give up their homeland
theory, and their struggle for a separate state, we are ready
to devolve power as much as possible under a unitary
constitution.

“If we fail to achieve peace through negotiations, if the
LTTE commences attacks on public property and people again, the
government is duty-bound to attack the terrorists and protect
the innocent.”

Sri Lanka’s Buddhist monk party has nine seats in the
225-member parliament.

(Additional reporting by Ranga Sirilal)