All Party Conference of 1989-90

Unfulfilled Undertakings Lead Once More to War Getting the legislation through Parliament, with a twothird majority where the repeal of the sixth amendment was concerned or even a simple majority where the dissolution of the NEPC was concerned, was taking its time.

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The LTTE was becoming increasingly impatient and alleging that they were being led into a "peace trap". The hope for dividends of peace were not forthcoming, or not fast enough to satisfy them.

Moreover on the ground, in the absence of any mutually agreed plan, the Sri Lankan security forces were moving in to fill the security vacuum and replace the departing IPKF. I feared that the way incidents were building up would soon lead to a head-on collision.

In May 1990, in a deteriorating situation, Premadasa dispatched ACS Hameed on two urgent and dangerous missions to meet the LTTE leadership and defuse the situation. Two abortive ceasefires were announced but the buildup of incidents continued. On 11 June, over an incident in Batticaloa involving the arrest and assault by the security forces of a Muslim tailor whose job it apparently was to make uniforms for the LTTE, open conflict broke out again. Hundreds of policemen, mostly Muslims and Sinhala, who had been posted to the Kalmunai, Akkaraipattu, Potuvil and Samanthurai police stations were asked to surrender and most of them murdered in cold blood. Apparently the IGP, Ernest Perera had ordered the men to surrender rather than fight back on being informed that the police stations had been surrounded by the LTTE cadres. The call to surrender by the government and the subsequent murder of the policemen continued to be presented in the media from time to time as indicators of the government's callousness and the LTTE's untrustworthiness.