In Sri Lanka too permanent solution to the ethnic crisis would be more successful and long lasting if a solution is found with a federal system or loose confederation model.

Once Abraham Lincoln said: "A good leader gains less glory and more defame than what he actually deserves". In Sri Lanka then Prime Minister Ranil Wickeremesinghe too might have felt the same in his effort to solve the decades-long ethnic crisis by the pressures from many angles, what the Late US President experienced in his tenure to solve the civil war and his struggle to liberate the slavery of African Negroes in the United States of America.

His hard passage as a log-cabin boy to the President of the United States of America made him to set an agenda to tackle the national issues slow and steadily but with courage and made him a statesman forever in his Nation and beyond the shores.

The Sri Lankan then Premier's Lincoln-style approach might have made suspicion among some groups in the island by his Memorandum Of Understanding with the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabaharan.

But the previous governments of Sri Lanka have done all the neo-chauvinist activities at the expense of the peace and harmony of the Indian Ocean’s Island Paradise, taking in their arms the legislative and enforcement powers by marginalising the minority community systematically since the independence.

And it seems everything is too late to compensate the blunders which the past governments have done within a Unitary model for a lasting solution to the community which once enjoyed its own Kingdom in the North and most part of the East parallel to those of Kotte and Kandy when Portuguese took over this island.

The immature approach of all parties in the political and war theatres in the past in the Indian sub-continent and the region caused mess in many issues and cost the lives of many in the North-East of Sri Lanka and the region.

The civilians, who were massacred by the IPKF in the Northeast, cannot be justified in any circumstances, forgetting what they came for originally to this Island.

The confrontation was caused only by lack of diplomacy in handling the captivated LTTE cadres in the Island's northern shallow seas of Bay of Bengal.

That is the first signal for an urgent need to bring into the scene a more professional third party mediator who is nothing to do with region's politics and an urgent need for establishing a high-powered monitoring committee on war disputes.

The mutual move by the then Prime Minister and LTTE Leadership to eradicate the previous set-backs which caused in the Pre and post IPKF era, by bringing Norway back into the scene, showed a new chapter in the Island’s history and a testimony for statesmanship.

The signing of MoU directly the groups, which engaged in war, seemed something realistic than the once popular Indo-Lanka Peace Accord, leaving the LTTE out of the scene.

Then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's more aggressive approach with lack of experience in the local and regional politics made him to rush into an accord with the Sri Lankan President J. R. Jayewardene by isolating the LTTE's importance in the peace negotiation, by keeping them in distance, only ignited a personal vendetta between the Indian Prime Minister and the LTTE leadership.

The confrontation, which started between the IPKF and LTTE would have been under control in the very beginning had the Indian diplomats and the then Indian High Commissioner dealt with it more sincerely beyond regional interests. And that would have saved the life of the former Prime Minister of India from his untimely death.

Though then President Ranasinghe Premadasa was helpful to the LTTE by arming them to pull out the IPKF out of the island, he failed to identify the realities of the ethnic crisis. He should have brought into the scene an independent facilitator immediately to fill the vacuum of the expelled Indian influence in the island and misinterpreted the LTTE's friendship, which was solely based on the common goal of getting the IPKF out of the island as a long lasting one.

The enmity and suspicion caused between the both communities for decades by the previous regimes of Sri Lanka again started to dominate, though it was absence for a while by the Indian presence and cost the Sri Lankan President's life too in the later days.

A third party mediation would have saved the life of a president who had a modest life-style and hard work which raised him from Keselwatte, a shanty suburb of Colombo to the President House though he never lived there with whom I had an opportunity to have a brief chat on my peace mission and been admired by his simplicity.

Then President Chandrika Kumaratunga initiated the third party facilitation in the later stage. But in the beginning she propelled some professionals and civil servants who were close associates to her and earned the wrath of the LTTE personally towards her on many issues.

Her major lieutenants on peace related issues were totally ignorant of the local and international politics but they lived in their own world as Kissingers and Field Marshals to activate a bloody experiment the "War for Peace" in the island.

They have failed to identify and conveyed her the importance of third party facilitation in the very beginning.

Then Foreign Minister's apparent attempt to marginalize the LTTE around the world only damaged their image and not their military power in the battlefield and made the government to face the worst military setback of all time with the collapse of the strategic military camp in Elephant Pass which is located in the banks of Jaffna Lagoon linking the Jaffna Peninsula and the main land in the island's northern high-way.

This incident made the government to rush for a tactical ceasefire and peace negotiation without any proper itinerary or destination.

The peace negotiation in hostile circumstances with lost credibility towards the government and personally towards the then Foreign Minister by his refusal to accept the casualties by the aerial bombings at the St. Peter's church and the Nagarkovil incidents in the northern part of the Jaffna Peninsula, made the LTTE to mark time for till an another political leadership took over the regime.

President Kumaratunga navigated the peace ship without clear itinerary and far-sighted captainship by her immature advisors on many sensitive issues and ultimately made her totally ignorant of all issues and to face the deadly icebergs in many forms.

Then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's flexible approach to revise the peace negotiation with Norway's facilitation, which was in a hampered stage by the petty personal issues than on any diplomatic strategy, has given some hope to the nation.

But things have changed completely over the time in the politics of Sri Lanka.

And after the new presidency of Mahinda Rajapakse, the hostility between the LTTE and the government further increased and the war is almost revived by all parties in the North - East of the Island.

If Sri Lanka couldn't find a solution for the ethnic crisis and an urgent restructuring plan towards the national economy, then the Indian Ocean's tiny nation too might be left out by the donors and the international financial institutions, as how the IMF did sometime back towards Argentina to tackle its own economy to earn its foreign reserve.

Sri Lanka will be in a mess in this globalized economy to build up the national economy, once it left out without any international assistance at the current stage.

Then the nation will have to make it as another Cuba or North Korea towards a closed economic set-up and drive back the nation towards the Stone Age.

The reparation of the messed paradise could be achieved by focusing not only on political issues, but economic as well. But all what we want is a Lincoln-Style approach to face the forces which confront the good changes on the national issues while they don't have any alternative plans and merely confronting for their own political mileage and make this already messed paradise in to a lost paradise forever!

The United States of America and the international community should promote a Lincoln Style approach in the war-torn Island at all level with careful diplomacy, than regretting later on as once then US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said in his own words after the Vietnam war "we acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this Nation. We were wrong. We were terribly wrong."

Rajkumar Kanagasingam is author of a fascinating book on German memories in Asia and you can explore more about the book and the author at AGSEP