WHEN I’m in London, I often buy my breakfast croissant from a convenience store across the road, next to the newspaper shop. While I’m paying, I make a little small talk with the young people working at the till. More often than not, they are from Sri Lanka.

I have discovered recently that all of them are Tamils. Just before leaving for Colombo last week, I asked one of them if he had any expectations of the peace talks that were going to start in Geneva in a few days. With a disgusted expression, he said: “Of course not. This conflict has been going on my whole life. I don’t expect our hopeless politicians to end it now.” I replied that I knew exactly how he felt, as the Kashmir problem has been around for as long as I can remember.

Apart from the Palestinian conflict, I don’t recall too many others that have gone on for so long. While the easy way out is to blame our erstwhile colonial rulers for these problems, it is relevant to ask why our leaders have been unable to resolve them in all these years. In the case of Sri Lanka, for instance, a quarter century has passed and the recently concluded Geneva talks have proved yet again how inflexible both sides are. Neither gave an inch, and at the end of two days, packed their bags and returned to Sri Lanka, oblivious to the suffering of their people.

A new twist in these talks was the government’s refusal to open Route A-9 leading to the Jaffna peninsula. This road is the main conduit of supplies to the area, and was shut by the army in response to a Tamil Tiger attack last August. Its closure has been the source of much hardship, as well as a loss to the LTTE coffers since they collected a large amount in tolls from trucks and cars.

The government is seeking to apply pressure on the separatists by offering to open it in return of guarantees that the Tigers would stop its attacks. The LTTE negotiators insisted that they would cease their attacks once the road was open. In short, a classic chicken-and-egg situation. Neither side was prepared to budge, and the talks ended in the stalemate we had been expecting. It was also clear that both teams of negotiators had been sent to Geneva with very little room to manoeuvre. In fact, neither was really prepared to make any concessions, and were there only to placate international opinion.

Over the years, I have made friends with many Sri Lankans, and they include Sinhalese Buddhists, Tamil Hindus, Christians and Muslims. Without exception, they are all heartily sick and tired of the conflict. Not one of them has a kind word for the politicians on both sides who are responsible for the mess the country is in. The last time I wrote about the situation here, I got a lot of fan mail and hate mail from both Tamil and Sinhalese readers, so I was reasonably sure I wasn’t too far wrong in my analysis. On this visit, the only thing that seems to have changed is that people have even less hope of a settlement than ever.

One thing that has changed is the ‘de-merger’ of the Northern and Eastern provinces approved by the Supreme Court. The significance of this administrative step is that it has reduced the territory the Tamils would legally control in any future political agreement. Although the LTTE is furious, and has withdrawn Tamil MPs from parliament, the fact is that they have the support of very few people in the Eastern province. With the breakaway Colonel Karuna faction (sustained, it must be said, by the Sri Lankan army), and the reluctance of the Muslims to be ruled by the LTTE, its support has certainly slipped.

Despite the seemingly intractable nature of the conflict, the contours of an agreement are clear, and they lie within a federal structure that would give maximum autonomy to Tamils in the north. This is something Colombo is not currently willing to discuss, sticking to the unitary form of government written in the constitution. But this intransigence is not reflected in most of the country, except in the South, the base of the ultra-nationalist JVP. The one hopeful signal was sent by the support the opposition has officially given the government in its dealings with the LTTE.

In our part of the subcontinent, an even longer-running feud still festers as Kashmir continues to hold well over a billion people hostage. Talks are held at which well-worn positions are repeated and where negotiators resemble people mumbling prayers over worry-beads which are shuffled around and around interminably. After the allotted time, both return home triumphantly, claiming that they made no concessions. The fact that they also made no progress seems to escape them and their bosses in Islamabad and New Delhi respectively.

While electing a new pope, the college of cardinals are locked in a room in the Vatican, and only released when they have succeeded. In the old days, deliberations went on forever, so it was decided that in order to hurry the election process along, hunger-pangs would focus the minds of the holy fathers.

I seriously suggest a similar technique for leaders unable to resolve differences: lock them up together without food, and wait for them to announce an agreement before allowing them out. After all, many of their people suffer from hunger because of their inability to solve problems, something they are paid (and elected, except in Pakistan) to do. So if they are deprived of their aloo-gosht and chicken biryani for a bit, it will be no bad thing.

Returning to Sri Lanka, it seems to me that the government is better placed to make concessions than are the Tamil Tigers. Why can’t President Rajapakse order the A-9 to be re-opened? After all, he would only be restoring the status quo. Finally, negotiations are largely about atmospherics. By re-opening the road, he would be signalling his concern for all Sri Lankans, including the Tamils in the north. By his present stance, he risks being seen as the president of the majority Sinhalese only.