Publication

This paper discusses the reasons for the repeated failures of peace negotiations between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The author analyzes the belligerent parties aims in the conflict and concludes that the negotiations were doomed to fail due to the non-negotiability of the question of state power. The publication suggests that the best course of action for managing Sri Lanka’s conflict is creating conditions for peace in a transformative process, which in a first step would presuppose a federalist reconstitution of the state along ethnic lines.