By M. Gunadilaka

    COLOMBO, May 22 (Xinhua) -- After the visit of two top Indian officials, the Sri Lankan government said it will give power to provinces as a political solution to the island's long drawn-out ethnic conflict, but politicians and analysts say the government has to face a series of obstacles before fully implementing the solution.

    The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are done and dusted in Sri Lanka's north and east after they lost their last piece of land on Monday. A brutal terror campaign to set up a separate Tamil homeland for the minority Tamils in the north and east has been decimated to ashes by the unflinching commitment of the government troops.

    The LTTE and their campaign of terrorism may be no more -- however the flame of incessant quest for political recognition and autonomy lit by them would flicker and linger on, analysts say.

    The government, the international community and political analysts have been dismissing with a sense of contempt for the Tigers' unwavering commitment for nothing but a separate state.

    But the rulers from the 74 percent Sinhala majority would not compromise the island's territorial integrity. So the dream of a separate Tamil state could merely be a dream in every sense of the term.

    The protagonists would never sing from the same power sharing hymn sheet and as a result the conflict resolution appears improbable.

    Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse made it clear in his victory speech on crushing the rebels that hammering out political consensus would be the key in his post-LTTE policy.

    He needs a home grown solution and not any prototype tried and tested in other parts of the globe, particularly the West.

    In 2006 he convened an all political party forum to come up with a draft political settlement.

    "We have been looking at the experience of all attempts in the past to arrive at a solution," Tissa Vitharana who heads the Al Party Representatives Committee (APRC) convened by the president said.

    The APRC panel met over 1,000 times and has reached an agreement on key areas. Still sometime left before it is able to come up with a final blue print.

    Various attempts for power sharing since gaining independence in 1948 have failed at a bloody cost. Tens of thousands of lives lost in the bloodshed. These range from a federal attempt in the 1960s to the district development council in the early 1980s to the union of regions in the late 1990s to the latest push for a home grown solution in the present post-Tiger rebel era.

    One system which had managed to get into the statute books albeit amid bitter opposition was the provincial councils system.

    The 13th amendment in 1987 was consequent to a direct Indian intervention in the island through the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord.

    Indians are back with the crushing of the LTTE rebels. Two top Indian government officials, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and National Security Advisor R. K. Narayanan wasted no time in coming to Colombo on Wednesday. Sri Lanka and India had agreed for Sri Lanka to fully implement the 13th amendment, a joint statement said on Thursday.

    The island of just 65,000 sq km has nine provincial councils --two of them in the areas of traditional Tamil habitant, the north and the east, where the LTTE had dreamed to establish an independent Tamil homeland.

    The provincial councils rule is subject to three lists of areas of devolution. The subjects under councils list -- the provincial councils elected every five years will have the full executive authority.

    The concurrent list -- the councils must consult the central government parliament before passing any statute under the list.

    The reserved list -- the provinces have no jurisdiction over the subjects to pass any laws on their own. It is the central government preserve.

    The concurrent list is where the problems remain. The list is tantamount to giving something with one hand and taking it back with the other, pro-devolution critics argue.

    "We have discussed the concurrent list and have proposed to completely abolish the concurrent list," Vitharana said, adding that his APRC had however not gone into examine the 13th amendment or the provincial council powers with a view to recommending it as the final answer to the question of devolution.

    Historically the chief ministers of the councils who are appendages of the ruling party at the center have not been clamouring for police powers. The recently set up Eastern Provincial Council was an exception. Although an appendage of the ruling party, Sivanesaturai Chandrakanthan, a former Tamil militant has made the case for unbridled police powers.

    The land rights and the police powers remain in the reserved list with a tight central government hold.

    The abolition of concurrent list should give the councils far greater autonomy than at present.

    Political parties remain skeptical of the home grown solution outlined by President Rajapakse.

    "If this meant going far beyond the devolution envisaged in the13th amendment then we will oppose it," Tilwin Silva, the general secretary of the leftist JVP or the People's Liberation Front said.

    "We ask the government to come out without trying to hide behind words," Silva urged.

    The move to fully implement the 13th amendment would turn upside down the military victories against the LTTE, some supporters of the JVP say.

    Tissa Attanayake, the general secretary of the main opposition United National Party (UNP) said his party would provide the necessary parliamentary support to the government to bring forward a solution to the national question.

    "They need to be clear on what they want to do," Attanayake said, adding that the government needs to take his party into confidence.

    It was the UNP which introduced the system when in government. They paid a heavy price for it. The JVP branded them traitors for what they alleged the UNP action to divide the country as a result of the system.

    "The Provincial Council system was forced upon us by India," Tilwin Silva of the JVP said bringing back memories of the era when the party's armed rebellion targeted at UNP grassroots activists in the post 1987 period. Some of the UNP's politicians in the provinces were gunned down with traitor charges.

    The JVP has revisited their branding of heavy Indian interference in Sri Lanka -- history repeating itself 22 years later.

    "The Indian insistence for the 13th amendment and the president' statement for a home grown solution are at variance with each other. Professor Vitharana's APRC makes it even more intriguing. He is on record as saying that the 13th amendment was not being thought of as a solution. All these make it very seriously complicating," an analyst who did not want to be named wondered.

    The LTTE and their proxy, the Tamil National Alliance both had no regard for the provincial council system. With the LTTE now out of the way the TNA may soften its stance towards the system, analysts say.

    But it will be a huge task to have parties with extremely divergent views to agree to a mechanism with even the basic form of devolution.

    Even with the comforting thought of no Tiger rebel presence and no violence it will be reasonable to question the devolution drawing board for Sri Lanka: Do they have the will to go down the long road for an ultimate political settlement? Only time will tell.