The Government is committed to full devolution to assure the minorities of their political and social rights, Peace Secretariat Chief Dr. Rajiva Wijesinha told BBC World in a recent interview.

"The most important thing is negotiation. Unfortunately, the Tigers have not been willing to negotiate, basically for four years, although there were brief talks last year. What the Government has done is, it has thought that it should really discuss a future constitutional package with the non-LTTE Tamils plus other minorities. And there is an on-going process," Wijesinha said.

Commenting on the killing of Tiger Political Wing Chief S.P. Thamilselvan, he said: "If he was committed to peace we should have actually had talks. I think he was withdrawn from peace talks. In fairness let's give him the benefit of the doubt.

He had been in military fatigue during most of the last year, but even assuming that he really wanted to negotiate; as he is dead let us give him that benefit, the LTTE withdrew him twice. We still hope that perhaps even now they will return to the table."

He said it was remarkable that Prof. Tissa Vitarana who heads the APRC has managed to bring together two sides that seemed at loggerheads - "one saying you need a merger of two provinces and other saying nothing larger than a district - into a consensus on the unit of the devolution, which of course we have discussed with India as well".

"And this is in terms of the 1987 Peace Accord which I think couldn't be properly implemented as the LTTE started fighting with India. So in a sense we should implement that if possible with full devolution so that the minorities could have the political rights that in the 80's they were pretty badly deprived of," he added.

Courtesy - Daily News/Sri Lanka Defence