By Our Defence Correspondent
President Chandrika Kumaratunga is fast losing patience with the armed forces over their inability to carve out a road to the Jaffna Peninsula and hinted this week that she may look for alternative methods to end the war.

In an interview with K. J. Varma, the Colombo based correspondent of the Press Trust of India, the President said that she is not opposed to the idea of third party mediation to solve the conflict, provided the LTTE gives up its demand for a separate state.

It is the first time that the President has talked of third party mediation, which is in itself a tacit admission that the armed forces are taking too long to win the war.

In the past, she had brushed aside offers by other countries to mediate, including those of the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, firmly saying that the Tigers must give up their weapons before any talks could be held. Several of her senior Cabinet ministers went even further and said that a mere token laying down of a few weapons would not suffice, and that the Tigers would have to make a substantial gesture of giving up war.

If the president's change in strategy seems somewhat abrupt, it is only because events have overtaken her almost infinite patience.

At his point in time, the president is well aware that the fortunes of the People's Alliance are hanging in thebalance. With Provincial Council elections scheduled in less than four weeks, she has to take decisions quickly, about the war and politics.

Despite all that her good deputy Prof. G. L. Peiris, could do, the cost of living has skyrocketed in the past three years, almost solely due to the huge war budget.

With foreign investors unwilling to pour money into a country ravaged by a seemingly endless war, investment in the country is drying up, made worse by Asia’s financial crisis. The result is that people don’t have much money to spend, despite all the strange figures being put out by the Central Bank.

When Local Government elections were held last year, the cost of living had not had as much of an impact as it does now. Besides, people are more likely to vote for candidates that they know, at local elections, rather than for a particular party alone.

But with the Provincial Council elections, people are far less familiar with the candidates, and are more likely to vote according to their party preferences. Thus, the looming polls will be a sure indicator of how the people feel about the PA.

If the elections end with a defeat for the PA, as many believe they will, then the UNP will definitely put pressure for a General Election, something the PA cannot afford right now, especially with their extremely thin majority in parliament. At the same time stepping back from such a challenge from the opposition would be humiliation the PA could never live down.

If the UNP wins such a General Election, there will surely be Presidential elections soon afterwards, or the country will become ungovernable.

Thus, it is clear that after four years of unchallenged rule, the PA has come to a major turning point.

When the war broke out in April of 1995, everyone knew that the fortunes of the PA rested with the ability or the inability of the army to thrash the LTTE on the battlefield. The President trusted in the promises of her deputy, Anuruddha Ratwatte, a man who had a set plan on how to win the war.

That plan revolved around pulling out troops from the east, marching on Jaffna, capturing the peninsula, and carving a road to Vavuniya. It was assumed that the LTTE would be so badly mauled in the process that the Tigers would be forced to the negotiating table on the government’s terms, which were a total surrender of weapons.

Political pundits, especially the minority parties, were even discussing what role Velupillai Prabhakaran would play in a peacetime Sri Lanka.

The first part of the plan went well. Jaffna town was taken, with severe losses to the LTTE.

But this was when the Tigers changed the game plan.

When the forces marched on the rest of the peninsula, they put up no resistance. Instead, they withdrew behind the Jaffna Lagoon, into the Wanni. “Come and get us in the jungles” seemed to be the message.

But when the army began the push down the road, with Operation Sath Jaya in November of 1996, things went wrong.

The LTTE, having had nearly a year to rebuild their strength, counterattacked with an unforeseen ferocity. The result was the stopping Sath Jaya at Kilinochchi in January of 1997.

The army then marched from Vavuniya to Mannar, hoping to divert the LTTE, but the Tigers didn't take the bait. Not a single Tiger unit barred the way to Mannar. Instead, the LTTE continued to rebuild its strength after Sath Jaya.

The army launched Jaya Sikuru from Vavuniya, but by then, it was apparent to all, which way the attack would come. The LTTE met this with the same ferocity.

The result, as the world knows, has been months of inching forward, stopping, being attacked, inching forward again, etc.

Once the army got to Mankulam, even the inching forward stopped. There just aren't enough soldiers to take the whole road, even with the air force, navy, and police helping guard it.

The problem is that the army takes just as long to recover from a battle as the LTTE does, in terms of numbers of soldiers. By the time the troops are ready to go forward, the LTTE are ready to receive them.

With everything concentrated on Mankulam, there is little happening in other parts of the northeast. The air force will pound targets it finds and the navy will continue sinking boats on the high seas, but the fate of the war is on land, as both sides know.

The flip side of the coin is that the LTTE has suffered such losses as well that they are in no shape to launch major attacks anywhere else, apart from blowing up transformers and telecom towers all over the country.

The only answer to the manpower problem is obviously conscription, something the president more than hinted at many times in recent months.

But the problem with conscription is that it is a universally unpopular method. Definitely not something a government can try when there is an election snearby. Perhaps after the election, we may see something different.

The trouble is that the government put all its eggs in one basket, and the strategy didn't work. Now, no-one seems to know how to get the government out of this mess.

Anuruddha Ratwatte more than hinted at his own solution to this. Postpone elections until the road is taken, he said at many public meetings. Even the venerable Mahanayakes echoed this theory, although they should not be advising how to fight a war.

But the president doesn't want to do this. Memories of her mother's disastrous defeat and disgrace after postponing a general election in the seventies are still fresh in her mind. Sri Lanka takes its elections seriously. We may murder each other, loot and burn shops and homes, deface every wall with posters, cause curfews to be imposed on the entire country, and generally behave like animals, but when it comes to casting the ballots, we show up on election day. Nothing offends us more than a government preventing us from choosing which of the corrupt rascals will govern us and steal all the taxpayers' money.

But while Ratwatte and the generals seem hellbent on forcing their way up the road to Jaffna, it is obvious that the president is now thinking of alternative methods to end the conflict. This is why she has hinted at third party mediation. It remains to be seen what course she will take.