BALA TAMPOE is general secretary of the Ceylon No. The TULF [Tamil United Liberation
Front, the former Tamil parliamentary
Mercantile Union (CMU), a major union in Sri Lanka. He group] has taken an equivocal position.
gave the following interview to Gerry Foley in Paris in They are obviously for the accord, but mid-April before the provincial elections (see page 9), the don't want to say so openly, because the
LTTE has denounced it. They want to reach background to which he describes. some understanding in the future with the
The interview deals with political and social developments LTTE, but they won't get it.
in Sri Lanka since the onset of the war between the major • Will the Indian government allow the
Tamil separatist organization, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil LTTE to survive?
Eelam ("Eelam" is the Tamil name for Sri Lanka) and the nitely serious about eliminating the LTTE as a military threat in the north and east.
There is no doubt about that. And they have succeeded to a very, very great extent in the north and to a lesser but still considerable extent in the east. But considerable num-
Indian Peacekeeping Force.
OW HAS the political situation i in Sri Lanka developed since force.
the EPRLF has already been recognized under the law by the Commission of Elec-
SRI LANKA
I think that the Indian government is defibers of LTTE people escaped from the the outbreak of the conflict be north, concentrated in the eastern province tween the Liberation Tigers of jungles, and from there they come out ma-
Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Indian rauding from time to time, strike at inno-
Peacekeeping Force (IPF)?
cent people, Sinhala villagers, blow up
In the north, the IPF is in the process of busses, and go back into the jungle.
liquidating the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist force, not liquidating it physically. In the
That is plain terrorist activity against the cisouth, the Sri Lankan army and the police vilian population. In the north, there are are in the process of liquidating the terrorist isolated incidents that maintain the atmosthreat from what is considered to be a military wing of the JVP. In the meantime,
President Junius Richard Jayawardene is going ahead with provincial elections in some provinces. The new four-party alliance of the LSSP, Communist Party, SLMP
(the Sri Lanka People's Party) and the
NSSP will participate in these elections.
• What are these parties?
The SLMP is a breakaway from the SLFP
[Sir Lanka Freedom Party, the more Sinhala nationalist of the two big bourgeois parties] to the left. Its most prominent personalities were Mrs Bandaranaike's second daughter and her husband, VJ Kamaratunga, who was a popular film actor and a very charismatic personality. He was going to be the presidential candidate of this new alliance.
A significant fact about the new alliance is that it also has linked up with two of the
Tamil groups in the north, who are also for working within the framework of the Indo-
Sri Lanka accord - the PLOTE (People's
Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam)
and the EPRLF (Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front).
Those two organizations have announced that they want to run in the elections. And tions, and is going to take part in the elections if it can.
The NSSP [Nama Sama Samaja Party] is linked to the Militant Tendency in Britain.
It was expelled from the LSSP [Lama
Sama Samaja Party, a labor party built by a
Trotskyist leadership that degenerated] immediately prior to the 1977 general election. They are a small party with some implantation in the trade unions. I would say that they have a couple of hundred members.
INDIA
All of these parties accept the Indo-Sri Lankan accord;
that is the positive common
TAMIL NADU factor uniting them all.
• Madural
• How big is the Communist Party in Sri Lanka?
It is hard to say exactly. It is not very large. But it has its old limited bases, some in the south and also in the western province. This so-called miliwing of the JVP has tary carried out political assassinations of some of their leaders in the south and one prominent Central Committee member in the wester province. Last month, the LTTE assassinated the CP's most prominent trade-union figure in the north, who was also a
Politburo member.
The
SLMP is seen as linked to the
CP and faces the same threat.
The LSSP counts for very
0 Miles 50 little, and the NSSP is not a
I wouldn't call that guerrilla activity.
Palk Strait
Bay of Bengal
Jaffna
NORTHERN
PROVINCE
Trincomalee
EASTERN
PROVINCE
SRI
LANKA
Batticaloa
Colombo
SRI LANKA Sri Lankan organizations CMU — Coylon Mercantile, Industrial and
General Workers' Union EPRLF — Eelam People's Revolutionary
Liberation Front VP People's Liberation Organization JSS - UNP-controlled trade union * Indian Peacekeeping Force LSSP — Lanka Sama Samaja Party LTTE — Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam NSSP -- Nama Sama Samaja Party PLOTE — People's Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam SLFP - Sri Lankan Freedom Party SLMP — Sri Lanka Mahajana Party TULF — Tamil United Liberation Front United Soclalist Alliance - Including the
CP, LSSP, NSSP & SLMP UNP — United National Party (ruling party of JR Jayawardene) phere of fear among the Tamil people. That is, there are isolated assassinations of people said to have collaborated with the Indian army, even women, some of whom are said to have married Indian soldiers. The Tigers have have made announcements, put out posters and things. • So, they have a policy of opposing any sort of fraternization with the Indian Entirely. Their policy is openly and directly one of treating the Indians on Sri Lankan soil as the enemy. And any collaboration with the enemy, fraternization with the soldiers, collaboration in any form of civilian administration set up with or by the Indian forces is regarded as treachery and will be punished with death. I must say that the Indian army has not eliminated that threat. And that's real for the Tamil people. It's real for the Sinhala and Tamil ordinary people living in those areas. So, there's a growing sense of frustration among those people. The Indian army is here and yet we have not got peace. What are they doing? Now, there is very strong propaganda going on in the south against the Indian army from sections that are not opposed to the accord directly, but who say, "What are they really here for? Why don't they get hold of Prabakharan? Why don't they get hold of his second in command? How is that Prabakharan and his lieutenant are able to send messages to Madras?" Obviously, they say, Indian forces are conniving in the Tigers' continued I believe that's correct. They don't want them to function militarily, but they don't want to eliminate them politically. They want to keep them going so that the Indian presence remains a necessity. • Are you saying that the policy of India is to establish a protectorate over Sri Yes, definitely. 24 They want to be in a position of being International Viewpoint #143 • June 13, 1988 arbiter in Sri Lanka politics?
I think that they want to do that in the first place to protect their own territory from hostile, foreign penetration into Sri
Lanka, which was, I think, becoming a real danger under Jayawardene.
He did turn to the Americans, to the British, to the Israelis, Pakistanis and others.
He did get some kind of assistance, direct or covert. Even today, I think, where the LTTE movement is concerned, the Americans would like to keep the LTTE going as a threat to the Indian forces, and thereby still keep the door open for some other • In this context, what was the interest of the Sinhalese groups that assassinated the leader of this new four-party alliance? Why would they have gone after him in particular?
I would say that he was undoubtedly the most charismatic political figure in the present situation. He was a very popular film actor. He was a very handsome personality. And he was a very nice man. I knew him personally. I have never felt that he was an opportunist or the sort of scheming politician that you find so commonly. And on the ethnic question, there is no doubt, of all the Sinhala politicians, he was the one who came out quite clearly and openly for proper understanding with the Tamils. He went to the north before the Indians came in, when two Sinhala soldiers were captured there to negotiate their
He met the LTTE leaders in Jaffna. He went with them to a Hindu temple - all open acts which certainly aroused hatred against him among the Sinhala racists. But he did have a political effect on the Sinhala people, because he was such a well-known; popular film star. So in that context, when the CP decided to bring about a new alliance with the LSSP and the SLMP, they chose him as the figurehead. • What is the alliance's objective?
They held a seminar on December 26, purportedly against terrorism but really to prepare the basis for setting up this new alliance. This was done on the footing, as I said, of acceptance of the accord and contesting the provincial elections. So, it is really a new electoral alliance with the limited purpose of going into the provincial elections. The objective is not to press for a general election, while they continue gen-
They are falling into line with JR Jayawardene's policy of holding provincial elections and putting off a general election, which I don't think he will hold in the end. He'll probably have another referendum. He's also trying to amend the constitution to run for a third term. So, he's not going to let go, as long as he's fit to hang onto the top position. There is no doubt in my mind about that. So that this group of parties that call themselves the United Socialist Alliance are really not aiming high. They want some sort of a political platform, and they think that the provincial elections will provide them an opportunity to get that.
Kamaratunga was nominated to head the alliance as their presidential candidate if there was a presidential election, which is supposed to be at the end of the year. They announced that on January 31, and the new alliance was to be formally inaugurated sometime in mid-February. On February
The so-called military wing of the JVP is said to have put out a statement saying that
Kamaratunga was bumped off for two reasons: one that he was going to divide the forces opposed to JR Jayawardene in the presidential election; the other was that he was a traitor, who had supported the accord and the presence of Indian troops in Sri Lanka. So, they openly admit that they bumped him off.
This is a bit peculiar, because the JVP has never formally admitted any of the terrorist operations that have taken place. There is a good reason for that. They want to come back into the electoral field as a recognized political party, and they are really pressing through their allies on the Sinhala right to have the proscription of the JVP lifted, and recently seven political parties headed by the SLFP called for the lifting of the proscription of the JVP. They can't very well come back into the political arena having openly acknowledged the political assassinations that have taken place. The press claims that there are frictions in the JVP, and that may explain some contradictions. • In these provincial elections, would you be in favor of a critical vote for the
No. We think that these elections are a purely diversionary move by JR Jayawardene. No real democratic content is going to come out of this as long as the emergency continues, as long as the Prevention of Terrorism Act is there, as long as thousands of people are kept in jail, as long as the Indian army is in the north and the Sri Lankan army is on the rampage in the south. You cannot have any kind of meaningful, genuine democratic setup established in these
That is why our line continues to be against the government's repression, against the emergency, for the repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and for the release of political prisoners. At the same time, we are explicitly saying that we don't support the government in the elimination of what they call terrorism. We certainly totally disagree with the terrorist parties. We denounce their massacres. We consider this terrorism to be reactionary and counterproductive. But the main enemy is not the terrorists. It's the UNP [United National Party] government and the forces allied to 1. The Tamils are mainly Hindu; the Sinhala are overwhelmingly Buddhist and consider the island the bastion of their religion.
• Do you think that this line of the United Socialist Alliance of participating in the elections is playing along with the government line?
Exactly, and that is reason why they have become a target for forces that are opposed to the UNP on a racist basis. So, we can't support them. We can't support that line. I attended this seminar on December 26, and I said openly there, "We cannot support your line because it is not directed forthrightly against the government's repression, which has gone on for ten years, and it is in those ten years that all these terrorist forces have emerged in the north and the • There are two aspects to this, then. One is that you don't support this alliance because of its line on "terrorism." At the same time, you are opposed to participating in elections until the state of emergency is lifted.
Yes, we say that any type of election held in this context is not a democratic election. So that in several respects, the situation is similar to, say, Bangladesh, where the opposition parties have boycotted elections, on the basis that so long as Ershad is there, you can't have a genuine election. I would say, by and large, the same applies under JR Jayawardene under the present state of emergency. And I would imagine that he will have another referendum. It will be • A referendum on what?
To keep the parliament going again for another six years without a general election. That is what he did in 1981. He wants to preserve the artificial two-thirds majority that was kept going by the last referendum. He's still changing the constitution, since he has a two-thirds majority. He's now planning for a third term.
So, all genuine democratic forces have to be mobilized directly against the repression. That cannot be done by going into his electoral games. That's our view. So, our aim is much more limited. It is to reestablish some kind of unification of working-class forces. • Are there any promising developments on that front?
In the last three months, there have been significant breaks in the trade-union front of groups that were under the JSS, that is, the UNP-controlled pseudo-trade union. In an important factory just north of Colombo, the entirety of the work force, including the white-collar workers, have broken away after ten years from the JSS and joined the CMU. South of Colombo, in a glass factory, again a JSS-controlled group of workers have broken away and joined the CMU.
Then in the giant British transnational Unilever the entire white-collar section of the workers, who were also in the JSS union, have dissolved that union and joined the CMU. There has even been a development like that in north-central province and the central province. In this area there is a transnational company that collects tobacco grown by local producers and processes it for export. They have depots. Now a number of the workers in those depots got together and they broke away from a JSS union, and have come and joined the CMU.
So, there are signs that the the UNP control is breaking down in the private sector. In the government sector they maintain their main hold because they can use their political position to discriminate. • What about in the north and east?
It's impossible to do anything there. The presence of the Tigers on the one hand and now of the IPF makes any free democratic political activity on the trade-union front or on the political front impossible. It is possible to do groundwork, but no public activity. The LTTE has totally destroyed all opportunities for independent mass political activity of any kind. They have totally militarized the situation. • Being opposed to participating in elections, presumably you are calling for a campaign of direct action?
Yes. But we are not opposing elections.
We say that they won't serve. Our aim is to ultimately mobilize direct action for restoration of democratic freedoms, mass action.
• Mass action is possible under the present circumstances?
The possibilities are limited. But on May
Day, there will be some sort of demonstration. But they will still ban demonstrations.
However, I do see the point at which such things can take place, because even within the armed forces there are divisions.
• What effect is the involvement of india in Sri Lanka politics likely to have
In India ultimately the state forces are go.
ing to come under increasing internal pressures. Within the whole context of the
Indian subcontinent, there is growing instability. We are caught up in that. But we now see ourselves as part of the Indian subcontinental development, not just a Sri
Lankan development any more. That's the historic fact. We've got to recognize it and deal with it on that basis. For instance, increased links between our working class and the Indian working class are very important. I have contact with trade-union leaders in India, particularly in the transport sector. They are very concerned about
• Does that meant that you would be in favor of democratic integration of Sri
Lanka into the Indian republic?
Not quite that, because that would be on a bourgeois basis. And I don't think that we could ever be really democratically incorporated into the Indian republic. But we are caught up in the whole crisis of the Indian
SRI LANKA state itself. • What is your position on the Indo-Sri Lankan accord?
We don't support it, but we don't oppose it. It's just like the provincial elections. You
"Don't take part." We are not taking a negative position, either on the accord or on the elections. Let that process take place. We tell the working class, and those who are interested in escaping from the situation that this is not the way out.
I have begun to rethink our whole future within the framework of the Indian subcontinent. World War II brought about the creation of a separate state in Sri Lanka, in India, in Pakistan and in Burma. The Fourth International itself first organized the section as the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Burma and Ceylon. This was done because Britain was the paramount power
History has proved that even after Britain left they couldn't function as separate states indefinitely. Now Bangladesh has come into being. So, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and to some extent Burma have got interlinked destinies for the future. But it's such a complicated situation, ethnically so diverse and with so many different religions that the role that the proletariat of these different countries can play still is very limited, very limited. • In Sri Lanka itself, do you see any favorable political developments among the Tamil population?
It is difficult to say that. You know, they are so frustrated. They had four years of this kind of instability, disruption of their daily lives, disruption of their economy, loss of their accumulated reserves and imp overishment. So for them to think in positive terms for the future is very difficult, particularly with the Indian army there and, as I said, this continuing terrorism of the LTTE.
But there is a growing feeling - which even some Western journalists whom I met have reported to me in discussions - that the LTTE has taken the wrong road, and that it is not leading to anything like an independent Tamil administration in the north and east. So, there is disillusion among the Tamil people in the north and east, and the working class in those areas is still too scattered and confused by these developments to be an effective factor. • What is the attitude of the Tamil population toward the Indian army now?
Clearly, from all the information we have, there is no love for the Indian army. There is dissatisfaction with the way they behave. They don't like the presence of foreign troops. Nobody likes the presence of foreign troops. But the widely prevalent view is they should remain there. They don't want them to go. Because they fear worse if they will go. 25 2. See IV 131, December 7, 1987. June 13, 1988 • #143 International Viewpoint
SRI LANKA
• How much Tamil collaboration is there with the Indian forces?
Very little, from the civilian population. But, as I mentioned in my last interview?, especially some of these Tamil groups that are hostile to the LTTE and have supported the accord have acted in collaboration with the Indian forces. They helped them to a considerable extent in destroying the LTTE bases in the north and in capturing some of their key people. To some extent, they have done that in the east too. Nearly all the top commanders of the LTTE in the east have been captured.
In an area in southern part of the northern province, some of these smaller groups have formed the Three-Star Alliance, and with the support of India they have some control there. Of course, the LTTE makes out that these are merely collaborators of the Indian army, and I doubt that any of them have anything like mass acceptance among the Tamil people. They would have their bases of support, but those would be very limited. I don't think that they are an important political factor. • What about political movement in the south. In your last interview, you talked about Sinhala Buddhist groups that were breaking from Sinhala chauvinism. Is there any further development of that?
Nothing manifest. Certainly the wage question is engaging a lot of attention now among the people in the south. The bank union for instance has won a very big victory by a go-slow and work-to-rule campaign. They have got a substantial increase, up to 40 per cent in some sectors of the bank union. There is definitely growing agitation now for wage increases. And that is likely to bring the working class increasingly into action. That could lead to political developments, because they'll come up against repression. • Are the four parties in the United Socialist Alliance playing a role in this trade-union militancy?
They are involved, but they are not very effective, because they do not have much of a base, including the Communist Party. The CMU has more of base, even among the industrial workers, than all of them put together. • Do you consider the SLMP a bourgeois party?
No, I would call it a petty-bourgeois radical party with socialist aspirations and ideas and some influence of Marxism in it. They tend to align themselves with the Communist Party's national orientation. The development of this current is linked to CP work in the SLFP. I know that there were some Communist Party people who went into the SLFP and then came out with the SLMP. 26 of So, the Communist Party has a line of working in what they would call the International Viewpoint #143 • June 13, 1988
"progressive bourgeois forces."
And petty-bourgeois forces. Mainly the petty-bourgeois forces.
• What's Is the CP's attitude toward
Sinhala nationalism?
They are careful about that. But they are really now taking the line of opposing Sin-
• Do they oppose the status of Sinhala as the only official language?
Well, they support the provisions of the accord that make English and Tamil official languages along with Sinhala, particularly Tamil, and then some degree of autonomy in the north and the east. • What is the vehicle of the mass campaign you propose. Is it the CMU?
We had a March 5 demonstration in 1987. Now for May Day we are having it on the same theme as we had on March 5 last year — that is, for human and democratic rights and peace and justice in Sri Lanka. That's our slogan. Now in the trade-union field, even with other unions, that's the line we put across. Very recently, around the beginning of April, the Union of Postal and Telecommunications Officers moved in this direction. The leadership formerly supported the UNP government, but with the just about to be implemented threat of privatizing telecommunications, they have now taken an independent stand.
They called a meeting of other unions that they regard as independent, like the CMU, and mooted the idea of setting up a council of independent trade unions. Now the bank union is also such a union, although they didn't come to the discussion. But we do look to trying to form a broader grouping of genuine independent trade-union organizations. • On the trade-union level?
That's right. And then to link them with even the politically controlled trade-unions of these four parties in the United Socialist Alliance in any move that we can develop. But we don't think it is going to be possible with their taking the line of going into the provincial elections. • So there is no possibility of a united front with these other parties, at least
Exactly. They are adding to the confusion in the working class. As you can see, both on the right and on the left of the political spectrum, there is confusion and diversion. So, any working class would find it difficult to cope with such a situation. And we've had ten years of the present regime. Now, there is an entire new layer of workers coming into existence after these ten years, largely uncorrupted but also very unsophisticated. Also, because of the expansion of the economy and increased foreign trade and types of foreign-linked enterprise, there are large numbers of new peo-
• Has this created a difference in the industrial structure of the country? Or is
It just an expansion of the traditional industries.
No. it is a change because this government has linked us up very much more than the previous government ever could with the international capitalist system. This means development of semimanufacturing, but export-linked and processing factories.
Even things like flowers, fish and tobacco
— everything is being exported. The country is in a sense being impoverished. The people are not even able to get their own produce, because most of it is now taken • Ceylon used to be relatively selfsufficient in food. It this no longer the
No, anything but that. The free-economy policy means that when strikes cause problems, they will immediately import from abroad. Now there is a dispute going on in the big tobacco giant British-American subsidiary, where there is a CP-controlled union. And they are having a collective agreement dispute. And there is a go-slow on, of a kind. Well, the government has given them a licence to import cigarettes, if necessary. So they can immediately draw on their foreign resources to deal with a • You don't have a phenomenon like other south Asian countries of the development of assembly plants?
No. it is more commerce than industry. Banking and things like that have expanded, internal banking. The banking services are much, much larger than they were before. There are thousands of new people in the banking services. And that is why the bank workers' union has become such a strong union now. • Is the Sri Lanka trade-union pattern like the Indian one, with in general unions are linked to parties and every time there's a split in a party, there is a corresponding split at the trade-union level?
Yes, now take the SLMP. It merely broke away sections of the SLFP, and those who adhered to the SLMP were grouped together in what was called the SMLP trade-union federation. There are no real independent trade-unions there. But there is a federation with nominally some trade-union units, which are not really trade unions. Then even the NSSP, when they broke with the LSSP, they broke away groups of LSSPers who were in control of some unions. In some cases, they captured the unions. But in other cases, they just got fragments. • Do you call for a united federation?
We have advocated that all along. We've never got it. The most that we have tried to do is bring about some kind of consultative agreement among the major trade-union
groups. But today it's not every effective. Most of these centers themselves can really offer very little. The most they can do is some picketing. • This proposal for a united federation is something very remote?
Very remote. The whole political complexion in Ceylon has to change for that. And if at all it is going to be through a new generation of workers. But certainly, in the new generation of workers, the support for the LSSP, CP and others is very, very limited. For instance, I take a cross-section of new workers who come to us. Of course, these breakaways from the JSS, they are the new workers who in the last ten years have organized under the JSS. But they didn't all vote for the UNP. I asked them, How do you vote? Invariably, I find that a fair proportion had voted for the UNP, a fair proportion had voted for the SLFP, a small but significant minority have voted for the JVP. Nobody has voted for the CP or the LSSP in those sectors of workers. And of course, a fair number have not voted at all. So, the significance and potential of the CP, LSSP and old left in the new working class is very, very limited. I don't think they have a future. • Politics must be much more localized than at any time since World War II.
Yes. But I think we are passing through a major historical change, when we have to reorient our thinking to the entire Indian subcontinent. Now, we are definitely promoting our contacts with the Indian trade-union movement. I have had some discussions with the Hind Mazdur Sabha leaders. The general secretary, for instance, is the top leader of the Indian Railwaymen's Federation, with 900,000 members. I have direct contact with them through the National Transport Federation, and with the Indian Seamen's Union, the Indian dockers and so on. So, as far as the CMU is concerned, we are also making our own membership conscious of the need for links with the Indian • Do the political alignments of the Indian unions present obstacles?
The Hindu Mazdur Sabha is not really politically aligned. They broadly came from the old Indian Socialist Party left, although there are Congress people in it. I would say that the Hindu Mazdur Sabha corresponds on an Indian-subcontinental level to the CMU in some respects. They have hundreds of thousands of members, essentially in transport. We are even going to collaborate with them on some issues, such as education, where we can develop more contact. • Do they have a general Marxist approach?
I am sure that there are people in that organization who have Marxist backgrounds, but in India Marxism has also suffered very badly in the period since independence.
President
Junius Richard Jayawardene
(DR) Many of these people are ex-lefts who have lost confidence in the Marxist left. • What is their approach to education,
It's really workers' education. Of course they belong to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), and their educational programs are to some extent structured on lines similar to those of the ICFTU. But we just recently received some of their workers' education material, and we find it's very good. They have appointed educators for all India, 68 educators, and their basic training is independent democratic trade-union organization with a social policy. They don't support the Congress or the Janata party.
There is a considerable degree of similarity in their approach to that of the CMU, although we have a more openly and directly left approach. They don't have that, probably because of the developments in the left in India, and because they are more mixed. We are a more politically homogeneous leadership in the CMU, and much smaller
SRI LANKA of course. They are on an all-India scale. • Is there nothing like the sort of education that the Black unions carry out in South Africa, which is a Marxist educa-
But you see Africa is still relatively new. So Marxism in some respects has an attraction there that it doesn't have in the older Asian countries where Marxism developed very strongly in the immediate pre-war and then post-war situation, and where the Marxist parties have become discredited, as for instance in Sri Lanka. Today, there is a total lack of any knowledge of Marxism. In a broad trade-union meeting today of ordinary workers, perhaps 5 per cent have heard of Karl Marx, heard the name.
So, the new generation is coming in with really no knowledge, even of leftism in the real sense of the term. That is why we are now concentrating on education for this year. We want to bring back a left education which has been lost, because the education that was being given was class 27 collaborationism and pseudo-Marxism. * June 13, 1988 • #143 International Viewpoint
New rise of protests tion of May 23. She accused the Azerbaidzhani authorities of deliberately staging the Sumgait pogrom, but did not put the blame on them alone.
Kapoutikyan, who had called on hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Yerevan's Opera Square on February 27 to give the Soviet authorities time to "seek a just solution for Nagorno-Karabakh,"