India’s dilemma in Sri Lanka
[BBC]
Any military victory in the civil war in Sri Lanka will almost certainly see pressure for the re-emergence of India in contributing to a settlement. Since the emergence of full-blooded Tamil militancy in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, the two neighbours have circled each other in an uncertain diplomatic tango, sometimes seeing eye to eye but more often holding each other at arm’s length. It was more more than 20 years ago that the then Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, first assumed the mantle of honest broker. Between 1985-1986 he arranged face-to-face talks between Sinhalese politicians and the angry young men who had taken up weapons to fight for a Tamil homeland.