Not so long ago, you would have been courting death by trying to drive from Colombo to Kilinochchi. Now aid convoys are rolling ail the way from the capital to the nerve center of Sri Lanka's rebel army, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Even so, the 250 - mile journey is like a visit to another universe. A disintegrating highway leads through agauntlet of Army emplacements as far, as the Sri Lankan government's control extends. Behind the Tigers' lines, the landscape abruptly changes. Trie road threads its way through lush greenery and signs warning of land mines. Many houses are roofless ruins. They're miles inland from where the tsunami hit. This damage was done by the island's civil war. Will peace emerge from the coastal destruction? Although both sides say they hope so, reasons for skepticismabound. Decades of tit-for-tat ethnic cleansings and atrocities have deepened the hatred between Tamils in the northeast and the Sinhalese majority in the south. The LTTE has been on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations since 1997. The group's fighting forces and suicide bombers have killed thousands of civilians. But now the Sri Lankan president's office has reached out to Sippiah Paramu Tamllselvan, head of the LTTE's political wing, seeking top-level policy talks. "National emergencies sometimes create statesmen," Tamil-selvan told NEWSWEEK last week. A hot line between the govern -ment and the rebels, inoperative for years, is back inservice. And, almost incredibly, the two sides have linked up to coordinate" their disaster efforts.
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