Balasingham puts off visit on Norway's advice

Tamil guerrilla's theoretician Anton Balasingham has delayed a scheduled visit to Sri Lanka on the advice of the Norwegian facilitators as the political crisis in the country continues to remain unresolved hampering the progress of the peace process.

Balasingham was due to arrive in Sri Lanka next week, but has indefinitely delayed his visit after he met Oslo's Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgessen and special peace envoy Erik Solheim in London.

Balasingham who was sidelined for the past eight months has been gradually taking command over activities of the movement at international level and returning to party activities. The meeting with Prabhakaran was arranged last month and they were expected to discuss their current stand. But, due to the unsettled political situation in the country, Balasingham had been advised to delay his visit to Wanni.

The visit was to be the first after he abruptly left Sri Lanka in April last year. Since his departure he had not been playing any role in the activities of the movement until he helped draft the LTTE leader's 'Maveera Day' (Heroes Day) speech in November.

Since then, Balasingham has been speaking in public forums and discussing athe LTTE's position vis-a- vis the peace process.

The reasons for sidelining Balasingham are not known. Some believe that it is due to personal differences with the LTTE leader, while others believe that it was a strategy of the movement when they wanted to keep away from the peace talks.

Analysts believe that Balasingham would have been under strong pressure to attend the donor conference, if he was actively involved in the movement.

London based Balasingham is known to have avoided meeting Helgessen and Solheim during that period. He had cited health reasons to skip some of the meetings.

In a related development, the LTTE's Jaffna District Political Wing leader, Illamparithy, who is currently on a tour of European countries met with Norwegian Foreign Ministry officials at the Oslo Foreign Ministry last week.

Among the officials he met were Solheim, Foreign Ministry Advisor Lisa Golden, and Foreign Ministry official Erik Giercshy.

Illamparithy had appealed to the Norwegians to consider providing aid to displaced people in 83 temporary camps.