Though Karunanidhi's Czech model has a controversy raging, over the last 40 years Sri Lanka had come out with as many as 13 proposals to end the conflict. The Lankan Tamils have suggested six international models at various points of time to address the issue. For instance, the Tamils often made it clear that Canada's Quebec model, where the French-speaking territory has a higher level of autonomy than the English-speaking regions, would be the right model to resolve the crisis. This idea was rejected outright by the Sri Lankan government.
The common strand that runs through every set of proposals - from the 1928 Donoughmore Commission recommendations through the 1957 Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Agreement, to the 13th Amendment and the Kumaratunga package - is Sri Lanka's rejection of an asymmetric approach to solving the problem and the insistence that whatever 'devolution' or 'decentralisation' that is on offer be equally available to the Sinhala provinces (which had never demanded it) and to the Tamil areas in the north and east of the island.
For every Tamil suggestion of an international model of asymmetric devolution of power, the Sri Lankan government came out with a symmetric alternative.
For instance, when the Tamils asked for district councils which would govern the Tamil areas, the Sri Lankan government suggested that all districts, irrespective of ethnicity, would be autonomous districts. The Sri Lankan government even rejected the idea and the district development council experiment failed. The Tamil demand for creating a united north and east provincial council with relative political and economical autonomy was incorporated in the Indo-Sri Lankan agreement. But when the Lankan government decided to implement the Provincial Council idea through the 13th Amendment to its constitution, instead of one Tamil provincial council within a unified Sri Lanka, it created eight provincial councils all over the island. The distinct identity the Tamils have been demanding has always been stymied by the symmetric solution.