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The demand for India¿s active engagement with the Sri Lankan peace process has been building up for the past couple of years following the gradual erosion in the credibility of Norway as an impartial ¿facilitator¿. With the election of President Mahinda Rajapakse, who is in New Delhi this week, this demand has gained momentum; more so because of the fast deterioration in Sri Lanka¿s internal peace.

As a new government led by Maithripala Sirisena takes charge in Colombo, New Delhi has a valuable opportunity to arrest the drift in bilateral relations over the last few years. The Modi government, less constrained internally than the UPA government, is in a good position to rebuild the partnership with Sri Lanka that occupies a vital position on India's maritime frontiers to the south.

During the meeting with visiting Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, Modi has indicated he would like to visit Sri Lanka in March. During the tour, the Indian PM may also visit Maldives, Mauritius and Seychelles. The visit has the great potential for these nations to emerge as a collective Indian Ocean Rim voice.

Whatever be the end-game in the ¿Karuna rebellion¿ within the monolithic LTTE, the development may have heralded a process of ¿social justice¿ or social re-engineering¿ as is understood in India ¿ and also come to stay, in a way. To the extent, the ¿Karuna factor¿ may have become unstoppable in the socio-political sense of the term, whatever be the immediate consequence of the rebellion, or its impact on the suspended peace process in Sri

SAARC conjures up an image of jamborees and no results. The South Asian Association of Regional cooperation with its seven members ( India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh) remains one of the most dysfunctional trade blocs and there is hardly any freedom of movement of goods, services and people. The next (13th) SAARC summit is going to be held in Dhaka in the beginning of January 2005.

This is an edited version of the talk given by Prof. Sudharshan Seneviratne, a well known historian and archaeologist from Sri Lanka, at ORF on April 9, 2012. Prof Seneviratne, currently Professor of Archaeology at the University of Peradeniya, Colombo, has carried out pioneering research in the field of archaeology and is a widely respected speaker on the subject.

Expecting India to bail Sri Lanka out every time there is a crisis may work for some time, but it's a recipe for disaster.

In the ongoing contest between China and India for influence, New Delhi has made some gains in the Maldives and Sri Lanka.

As competition intensifies in the Indian Ocean Region, India loses touch with Sri Lanka and solidifies relations with the Maldives.

LTTE supremo V. Prabhakaran is 'hale and hearty' and busy conferring honours to those who died fighting for Tamil 'Eelam'. Known for his crafty ability to dodge the Sri Lankan armed forces time and again, Prabhakaran made his first public appearance in many months putting at rest the rumours of his failing health.

On the domestic front, Sri Lanka remained engaged in the forthcoming Provincial Council elections. On the eastern front, various electoral alignments are being worked out. Bargaining is taking place among political parties to woo winnable contenders to their side.

Though belatedly, Norway, which brokered a Ceasefire Agreement between Colombo and LTTE in 2002, clarified that it never supported the creation of a separate Tamil Eelam contrary to popular belief. Majority of Sri Lankans, including President Rajapaksa, accused Norway of being pro-LTTE.

In a total reversal of its earlier stand, the Sri Lanka government agreed to open talks with the LTTE claiming the outfit as one, though not the sole, representative of the Tamil demands. Surprisingly, no preconditions for talks are imposed by the government but at the same time,

With Sri Lanka forces capturing strategic towns occupied by LTTE not long ago, the supporters of the LTTE Chief Prabhakaran have expressed fears about his safety. Prabhakaran, believed to be hiding in a bunker in the dense forests of Vanni,

Tamil Nadu has always played an important role in the ongoing ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Tamils fighting for their homeland in the island nation has always desired and appreciated the assistance rendered by their Tamil brethren from the neighbouring India,

In a surprising statement, the military spokesman of Sri Lanka Keheliya Rambukwella claimed that Al Qaeda and those involved in the bombing of Marriot Hotel in Islamabad were trained by LTTE. The technique was similar to the one used by the Tamil group way back in 1996 when a truck loaded with a bomb exploded near Colombo's Central Bank killing 91 people.

With Sri Lankan Army just two miles away from the de facto capital of the LTTE, Kilinochchi has turned into a ghost town. Most of the civilians have fled along with many humanitarian organisations leaving the LTTE cadres to carry out the counter-attacks.

After lying low for decades, the Sri Lankan Tamil issue made an entry into the native Indian Tamil psyche in a big way. The twin reasons responsible for such awareness among the Tamil population are--- first, the escalation of fighting in Sri Lanka where government forces seem to be getting an upper hand and second,

In response to India's (more particularly Tamil Nadu's) overtures to stop the Sri Lankan offensive against LTTE in their northern stronghold, President Mahinda Rajapaksa made it clear that his government was not going to stop its war against the Tamil Tigers midway, especially when its forces were just two kms short of Kilinochchi.

In a bid to pacify internal as well as external concerns, India decided to send relief supplies to the trapped Tamil civilians in the Wanni war zone through international relief committees like the Red Cross. The intervention is different in two ways from the earlier Indian interventions in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankan President unveiled the biggest ever war budget in the history of the country in view of the ongoing war with the Tamil Tigers. The budget has seen the massive rise of 7% in the war expenditure to a record 1.6 billion dollars in the year 2009.

On his 54th birthday, LTTE supremo Prabhakaran made the Heroes Day speech even as the Kilinochhi, the de facto administrative capital of the Tigers is within an arms reach of the Sri Lankan Army. The speech lacked assertive tone

Even as the war between LTTE and the Sri Lankan army is taking a heavy humanitarian toll, European Union decided to retain its GSP+ trade preferences for Sri Lanka till the time it completes its humanitarian probe in the troubled region.

The week saw India, specifically Tamil Nadu, adopting a rigid stand against the remarks made by the Sri Lankan Army Chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka during his interview with Sunday Leader. In his interview, Fonseka described Tamil Nadu politicians like Nedumaran and Vaiko as "jokers".

The series of bomb blasts killed 48 people between February 2 and 4 marred the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of the Sri Lanka's Independence from the British rule... The celebrations, held at Galle Greens in full public view despite repeated threats, were also marred by party politics when opposition parties including UNP, JVP and TNA refused to be a part of the procession.

This week the clash between Sri Lanka's executive and judiciary became public when the former refused to comply with the latter's direction to pass on the benefit of the internationally low oil prices to the customers by bringing down its cost to nearly Rs 100.

The week saw the President of Sri Lanka taking decision to proscribe the LTTE if it fails to release the remaining Tamils of the North living in its captivity, before 2009. According to an estimate,

Sri Lanka imposed a ban on LTTE following the organisation¿s failure to release 2,50,000 civilians from its hold. The civilians are often caught in the crossfire taking place between LTTE and the Sri Lankan armed forces. Besides, in the absence of basic necessities,

It appears that the LTTE debacle and the protest voices emerging from Tamil Nadu as an aftermath has no effect on the bilateral relationship of India and Sri Lanka if a recent visit of the Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon to Sri Lanka is any indication.

Barely a year after eastern Sri Lanka witnessed a ray of hope under the Thamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP)-Sri Lanka Freedom Party coalition led by former LTTE child soldier Pillayan, things have been going from bad to worse.

Sri Lankan authorities considered 'hilarious' the ceasefire demand put forward by the LTTE, especially when it has only the few fighters left in an area which is less then 60 sq km. This week, LTTE requested the international community to bring

Initially criticizing Sri Lanka for having to carry out military onslaughts on the LTTE, United Nations lately come face to face with the grim reality when one of its own aid worker died in a cross-firing and three others including a teen age girl was forcibly recruited by

The week received mixed reactions from international community vis-à-vis Sri Lanka, some of which were in favour and some were against the military approach adopted by the Rajapaksa regime against the LTTE. Sri Lanka realized the importance of being friends with the permanent members

Clock is ticking fast for the LTTE whose chief along with his son and some of his trusted colleagues has taken a refuge among the civilians in a No Fire Zone. Sri Lankan military intelligence has reported that LTTE's Intelligence Chief Pottu Amman has taken over the command of the dying

The tiny nation's economy has become yet another victim of the protracted ethnic conflict between Tamils and Sinhalese. This week, Standard and Poor credit rating agency has downgraded the rating of Sri Lanka from 'stable' to 'negative' reflecting concerns about the weak fiscal consolidation efforts and the unfavourable trends evident in the country's debt profile.

In Sri Lanka, everybody is uncertain about the future. Nobody knows what happens next. Take for instance, the victory march of Sri Lankan Army (SLA) which was once again bogged down by the LTTE's resurgence. Though the week started with the forward march of the Sri Lanka defence forces after the killing of the three senior female LTTE leaders at sea including Lt. Colonel Kalai Arasi,

LTTE's operational capabilities, in different dimensions, were hit hard at several places this week. While the Sri Lanka Air Force jets pounded the LTTE¿s communication base with transmitting tower in the north-east of Oddusudan junction, British parliamentarians came down heavily on the group's credit card frauds to fund its terrorist activities.

The United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee report on Sri Lanka released this week recommends that the US needs to adopt a fresh approach to this South Asian nation owing to its strategic importance in the Indian Ocean region.

In a move that took many by surprise, Sri Lanka's Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe accepted most of the criticism leveled against his government by the United Nations over the resettlement of 250,000 Tamil refugees.

Sri Lankan Navy and Indian Navy successfully conclude their joint naval exercises, which started on October 6 and continued till October 8, 2009. The naval training exercise, code-named CADEX 2009, took place on the western seas off Sri Lanka.

A ten-member parliamentary delegation from Tamil Nadu visited Sri Lanka and met with President Mahinda Rajapaksa and discussed the resettlement of the 250,000 war refugees.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa-led ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party-United People's Freedom Alliance coalition won the southern provincial council elections with a heavy margin.

Sri Lankan authorities criticised the latest move by the international community, particularly the US, to 'interview' war hero former army chief General Sarath Fonseka about events that led to the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the death of its leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran.

In a move that was not unexpected, Sri Lanka's Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Sarath Fonseka resigned from his post, which was created exclusively for him by the Mahinda Rajapaksa government soon after the end of the ethnic war.

Sri Lankan Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samrasinghe claimed that 143,672 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) have been resettled. There were 280,000 IDPs when the fighting ended in May 2009.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has called for early Presidential elections, which would be held on January 23, 2010. Under the Sri Lankan Constitution, the President can call for an early election after the completion of four years out of his six-year term.