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President offers advice to
PM
[October
08, 2003 -
10.30
GMT]
President Kumaratunga has written Prime
Minister offering him advice and guidance. The letter dated October 06,
refers to the threat posed by the LTTE build up in the vicinity of the
Trincomalee Naval base and harbour.
[Full text of the letter]
6th October 2003
Honourable Ranil Wickremesinghe
Prime Minister
Prime Minister’s Office
Colombo 3.
Dear Prime Minister,
LTTE Threat to the Trincomalee Naval Base and Harbour
I write with reference to my letter of 12th September
2003 on the above subject and your reply of 17th September 2003,
thereto.
I find that your letter does not reply to the important security concerns
that I have raised in my letter. Your responses are evasive and attempt to
divert attention from the very serious threat to National Security, caused
by your acts of omissions and commissions in the name of the Peace Process.
I do not have to repeat the issues I have raised in my letter of 12th
September. I make it clear that the Trincomalee Harbour and the Naval Base
are in serious danger, based on reports of the US PACOM Assessment Team and
of the Commanders of the Sri Lanka Army and Navy, as well as on several
briefings given to you by the Security Forces on several occasions, and that
you, your Minister of Defence and the Media Spokesman Minister have
misrepresented the true facts to the Head of State and to the people, on the
deteriorating security situation in Trincomalee and not executed your duties
in ensuring the security of the State and the Nation. I also raised the
issue of the government “turning a blind eye” to fourteen attacks on the
Muslim People of the Muttur Area by the LTTE during one year of the Peace
Process.
You respond by citing all kinds of examples and situations, quite irrelevant
to the issue at hand, whilst grossly misrepresenting the truth. I shall
unfortunately have to waste your time, as well as mine, in responding to
some of your statements, even though irrelevant to the issues raised by me,
as they are historically and politically important.
1. I am amused at your objection to what you call my purported “public
discussion of security issues through the media”. As on some previous
occasions, I am once more surprised at your selective insomnia regarding
important matters of State. You have surely not forgotten so soon that it
was your Media Spokesman, Mr. G L Peiris, who first raised this issue in
public at one of his weekly Media Conferences. Whilst you were quoted in
one of your family newspapers to have stated that the Commanders and other
Senior Officers of the Navy were lying, when they stated that the LTTE had
set up a strategic ring of camps encircling the Trincomalee Naval Base and
the Harbour, after the CFA was signed.
Since the beginning of May 2002, for sixteen long months, I kept warning,
instructing and trying my best to persuade you and the Minister of Defence
of the impending dangers to the Sovereignty of the State and the Security of
the Nation at meetings I had with you, as well as, at National Security
Council meetings attended by the Minister of Defence, Commanders of the
forces etc. The only response I had were statements from you verbally and
sometimes in writing to the effect that you did not have to be told by me
and so on.
The Minister of Defence, for his part, is on record for the statements at
three National Security Council meetings that “one should turn a blind eye”
to the LTTE bringing in arms and ammunition to the country and matters such
as child conscription, when I raised these issues very formally. Finally at
the National Security Council meeting on 19th of August 2003, he
went as far as making a most shocking statement regarding the continued
military build up of the LTTE. This statement is on record, but I shall
desist from mentioning it here in the interests of national security, as it
will be a serious mistake to permit the LTTE to know of the
irresponsibility, partiality and highly politicized manner in which defence
affairs are conducted at the moment.
I thank you for your advice on how I should conduct Defence matters at
National Security Council Meetings. Suffice it to say, that for nine long
years before you decided to proffer advice on this matter, I have
successfully conducted Defence matters, as well as the affairs of the
National Security Council.
It is incorrect to say that I have had National Security Council Meetings
without informing the Minister of Defence or his Secretary. Both of them
have been informed of all National Security Council Meetings. You too were
informed of them at the outset, but as you excused yourself from several
very important meetings of the National Security Council, it was thought
that you did not wish to attend these.
2. The next substantive issue you have raised in page 2 of your letter is to
tell me that I should not raise the issue of the Trincomalee Naval Base,
because I had failed to ensure security of the State, when I held the post
of Minister of Defence. Even if your contention were true, how does it
absolve you of the duties and responsibilities which I have permitted you as
Prime Minister to fulfil. I truly fail to comprehend the logic of your
statement. If as you say I have “messed up” the Defence of the State during
my tenure of office as Minister of Defence, you seem to contend that you are
therefore bestowed the right to “mess up” further.
Your own highly personalised version of recent historical events, wholly
belie actual facts. You talk of the loss of “the whole of the Vanni” after
Jayasikuru. While on the subject of history, I am truly shocked by your
total amnesia about the factual situation which pertained in Jaffna, after
the black July of 1983, presided over by the previous UNP Government. Not
only the Vanni, but the entire Northern Province was lost to the LTTE, many
years before I took over the Premiership from you in 1994, during the period
when Messrs. Premadasa, Wijetunga and you, were Premiers of the UNP
Government. By 1994 August, the entire Northern Province was under total
control of the LTTE, with Mr. Prabakaran presiding over all the institutions
of Government, from his Headquarters situated in Jaffna Kachcheri. The writ
of the Government of Sri Lanka was practically limited to five Army camps
dotted along the Northern Coast and a sixth one in Vavuniya on the
boundary between North and North Central Provinces.
My People’s Alliance Government was able to take back about 80% of the
Northern Province which had been ceded to the LTTE by your previous
government, within fifteen months of coming to power and seven months after
the LTTE reneged on our Cease Fire Agreement and negotiations and
recommenced the War. We were also to take back about 40% of the A9 highway
and about half the access area to the LTTE Headquarters in Mullaitivu.
The LTTE was able to take back some parts of the A9 highway and the
Nedunkerny area, after over three years. I am most surprised that you have
forgotten all this part of our history i.e. your failures before 1994, our
massive victories after 1994, but only refer to the loss of parts of the
Vanni (not the whole of it as you wish to state) and the loss of Kilinochchi
and Mullaitivu and parts of the A9 highway etc. By the way, Poonaryn Camp
was not lost by the Sri Lankan Forces, nor were we repulsed by the LTTE, as
you state, but the Government withdrew the small camp that existed there in
1994, as it was not strategically important, after we took control of almost
the whole of the North. It may also be of interest to note here that
Nedunkerny, a crucial strategic location, situated close to the LTTE
Headquarters, was lost after a treacherous conspiracy by a handful of
Military Officers, directly connected to the UNP who were court-martialled
for this crime.
You also seem to be unaware that the LTTE attempted, in a massive attack in
mid April 2000 to take back the Jaffna Peninsula, but were successfully
repulsed, even though they were able to take back a small area at
Kilinochchi and Elephant Pass. You may remember this well, because you were
in Chennai on the day Kilinochchi fell and you had an unusual reaction for a
Sri Lankan political leader, when informed of the fall of Kilinochchi to the
LTTE.
In near two decades of war initiated by your UNP Government in 1983, the
only period where the Armed Forces successfully conducted massive victories
was during the stewardship of the People’s Alliance Leadership from 1994 to
2001. The bravery of our forces and the commitment of the political and
military leadership gave us clear victories in the war, whilst we loss some
battles.
Your strange interpretation of historic facts is a clear insult to the
bravery and courage of the tens of thousands of our men who fought with
immense dedication for their country.
3. May I also mention, that during the entire seventeen year term of the UNP
Government, from 1977 to 1994, there was no concept at all of a negotiated
settlement to the ethnic conflict and the war. Your policy was only one of
war and the most horrendous violation of the fundamental rights of the Tamil
People, as the only possible solution to the ethnic question of Sri Lanka.
The Vision, Strategy and Action Plan for Peace through a negotiated
settlement, was put into operation for the first time by the People’s
Alliance Government, within nine days of arriving in power in August 1994.
By August 1994, polls surveys showed that only 23.4% of the Sinhala People
supported a negotiated settlement. In accordance with our policy for Peace,
we launched a massive and extensive campaign of persuasion of the Sinhala
People, that a negotiated settlement with Devolution of Power, was the only
durable solution available to any government. By end 1996 (after 2 years),
the count had risen to nearly 65% of the Sinhala people, supportive of a
negotiated settlement, even after my government was unwillingly compelled
into military operations by the belligerence of the LTTE.
May you be reminded that it was also the PA Government, that had the courage
and the statesmanship to undertake for the first time since independence,
the long abandoned task of Nation Building through a well plannned policy
covering the economic, social and constitutional spheres to facilitate the
resolution of the ethnic problem. We formulated the most progressive
Constitution, containing proposals for the resolution of the minorities’
problem. You made you mark in history, by diligently refusing every request
by me and by other members of my government together with the people of the
country, to actively participate in the formulation and promulgation of this
Constitution. The high water mark of that policy was the infamous conduct
of the UNP led by yourself, in Parliament, when I presented the self same
Constitutional Proposals to Parliament on 3rd August 2000.
4. You state that “by 1995 I had withdrawn all the troop detachments” in the
Trincomalee District, with the implication that this was the cause for the
LTTE’s present strength in the area. If this was so, how is it that for
seven long years, the LTTE had not set up any camps in the said area and did
so only after you took over the reigns of the Peace Process? How it is
that, innocent Muslim civilians are being continuously harassed, nearly
fifteen times, by the LTTE in the last one year, many military personnel
killed, Political leaders of Democratic parties killed, soldiers abducted,
continuing child conscriptions occur in Trincomalee for the first time since
1994, the establishment of new training camps for the new recruits, have all
occurred during your stewardship of the Peace Process. Do you seriously
believe, Mr. Prime Minister, that the removal of one small camp in Sampur in
1995, is the real cause for the LTTE to establish seventeen camps encircling
the Trincomalee Naval Base and Harbour in 2002/2003? Permit me to
re-iterate that it is the naiveté, inefficiency, and irresponsibility of
those presently managing Defence affairs that has placed the most
strategically important Naval Base of the Country and its second most
important Harbour at serious security risk.
5. You talk of an armed attack on the Katunayake Air Base in July 2001, once
again amnesia seems to be working overtime. Do you not remember thirteen
major attacks in a period of 12 months in the years 1986/87 on government
institutions, in and around Colombo including the Katunayake Air Base during
the Government of President J. R. Jayawardena, of which you were a Cabinet
Minister. As compared with this, during intense military operations between
the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE from mid 1995 to end 2001, a full
period of six years, there were six LTTE attacks in and around Colombo.
Your earlier presentation of the military activity of the Government of Sri
Lanka from 1995 to 2001 is a complete insult to the bravery and efficiency
of our armed forces. But, of course, I should not be surprised, given the
manner in which you and some of your Ministers conduct themselves to
demoralise the Commanders of the Forces and their men and women.
If losing a few battles and winning the major ones is what you call “a sorry
track record of failure” in implementing national security, what would you
call losing the entire Northern Province to the LTTE? May be the Oxford
Dictionary will have no words to describe it. The whole country knows,
including most UNPers that the sovereignty, territorial integrity and the
security of the Nation which was protected only after 1994, is today once
again, under serious jeopardy.
6. I am fully aware that your assertion of being “prepared to meet any
security threat”, is completely false and untrue. You did not even bother
to get yourself informed of the dangers of which the media and many informed
persons kept intimating, that Trincomalee is in danger, until I requested
the Commanders to make a detailed report to me. Thereafter, more than two
months later you, summoned the Commanders for a briefing and then publicly
accused them of lying. You have thereby unwarrantedly demoralised the
Commanders and their men.
7. Also, could you have the kindness to inform me with specific facts how
and what decision was taken by the People’s Alliance Government, “based on
party political expediency as opposed to strategic decision making”. Here,
I implore you to attempt to present facts truthfully, rather than taking
excerpts of history and twisting them to suit your story.
8. Another misrepresentation of the truth. The PACOM Team that visited Sri
Lanka and provided a report on the security situation, had nothing to do
with the Navy Commander’s visit to Hawaii and Washington. The PACOM Team
visited Sri Lanka and handed over the report in November 2001. The visit of
the Commander of the Navy was due in June 2002. There is a period of seven
months between the handing over of the PACOM report and the Navy Commander’s
visit to Hawaii.
At the time I was surprised by the sudden and unexpected arrangements by
Minister Moragoda, yourself and the Minister of Defence to send the Navy
Commander out of the country, on a couple of courtesy calls. At this time,
there were three 60 ton LTTE ships, carrying arms, anchored in the seas
off Indonesia, waiting to enter the territory of Sri Lanka.
You wanted the Navy Commander’s visit to last fourteen days. At my
insistence it was cut down to four days. Yet the LTTE attempted to bring in
one ship into Sri Lanka on the night of the third day after the Navy
Commander was sent off on a four day visit, organised by you!! Was there no
connection between the sudden unusual decision to send the Navy Commander
out of the island and the LTTE bringing in armed ships within this small
slot of 4 days? Are these the “facilitations” and “confidence building
measures” towards the LTTE undertaken by you in the name of the Peace
Process?
9. Also you speak of improving our (a) intelligence (b) armed preparedness.
I am aware that this is also not true. I do not want to go into details,
about the degradation of some of our intelligence services, through
politically motivated actions since 2001, which I had painstakingly
restructured after 1994.
10. Also if you say that you have ensured that the forces are in a state of
preparedness, how is it that the recommendations of the PACOM Team regarding
Trincomalee have not yet been implemented. Does your interpretation of
having the Armed Forces in readiness include permitting the LTTE to recruit
and train and have in readiness three times more hardcore military cadres
than before your Cease Fire Agreement; “turning a blind eye” to bringing in
six shipments of arms after signing of the MOU until the President and
Commander in Chief decided to stop the 7th, 8th, and 9th
shipments from coming into the country?
You speak of several programmes you have begun for the Army, Navy and Air
Force. I know of no such programmes that have been implemented in the last
21 months of the UNP Government. The only programmes I know of, are the
ones where you have permitted the LTTE to have, in order to conscript up to
20,000 cadres, mainly young children and train them etc., whilst you and the
Minister of Defence continue to demoralise the Commanders and the Personnel
of the Security Forces with irresponsible statements and disregard towards
their requirements for preparedness.
The only programme in the sphere of Defence that I am aware of, which you
have constantly tried to implement without success, is the one where you and
your Minister of Defence and a so-called Defence Review Committee, headed by
a long retired general who has never fought a war, is to attempt to grab the
powers of the Executive Head of State and Commander in Chief with regard to
Defence matters.
11. I am delighted to note that you have at long last, seen the necessity to
discuss with the Security Forces Commanders about the security situation in
Trincomalee, after several months of warnings and advice from me on the
same. Could you kindly reveal, even at this stage, your so-called programme
for restructuring the Armed Forces at least to the President and the
Commanders of the Forces.
You further state that I “deliberately seek to play politics with security
issues and the lives of young men and women who are defending Sri Lanka’s
Territorial Integrity”. Good Grief, Mr. Prime Minister! For two long years
I have tried hard not to bring to the notice of the Public, the serious
dereliction of duty that you have indulged in, only because I wanted to
afford you the space to freely achieve the Peace that you promised our
peoples. I would like you to try, if it is possible for you, to define what
you mean by playing politics with security issues. Am I to understand that
your political ethics and morality regarding the National Interest, means
that one must hide from the Cabinet of Ministers, the relevant authorities
and the people, the true facts about crucial matters of State such as the
Sovereignty, and security of the State and the safety of our Peoples? If
ensuring the latter is what you call playing politics, it will be most
interesting to know what you consider to be statesmanship and effective
governance.
12. Further, you talk of an effective national security strategy. It must
be the effectiveness of your strategy, that allows the LTTE to eliminate
most military intelligence personnel, (those who survive the politically
motivated police raids on their covert bases), murder non-LTTE, democratic
Tamil political activists, smuggle in ship loads of arms, increase their
cadres from 6,000 to 20,000 through the kidnapping and conscription of
children in government controlled areas, extort money from civilians,
brutally mistreat the Muslim Community in the Eastern Province, gather
detailed and minute intelligence on all security bases and installations in
the North and East, create arms caches and safe houses throughout the
country, raise the Eelam flag in government controlled areas, dictate to the
government’s administrators, vastly expand the illegal structures of a
separate State such as the Eelam Police, Eelam law courts, Eelam penal
codes, Eelam Banks, etc. and completely dominate the lives of the community
in the entire government controlled Northern and the Eastern Provinces.
13. If as you have implied your various foreign trips and visits have
created a much talked of “international safety net”, as distinguished from
an international security net, your net has huge holes in it, though which
Tamil children, Muslim civilians, military intelligence operatives,
democratic Tamil political activists among others have all fallen through.
More importantly your implied safely net has failed to prevent the LTTE from
recruiting, rearming, regrouping and essentially redeploying for battle.
In that context the current neglect of the security forces and the steep
decline of the preparedness of the military is alarming. Until my
intervention in the recent past, half the Navy and Air Force fleets were non
operational due to lack of funds allocated for maintenance and repairs.
14. You talk about a huge difference from the situation we were in 2001.
Let me inform you that there was a huge difference in 1995 from the state of
affairs the country was plunged into at the end of 1994.
You and your controlled media, continue to speak of 2001, blinding yourself
to what happened between 1994 and end 2000, militarily, economically and
where fundamental rights were concerned. There were huge leaps forward.
The economy had an average of 5.5% growth until June 2001. We reduced to
7.5% the unemployment rate of 14.3% bestowed by your government, we
increased salaries by an average of 225% and so on.
I wish to remind you, Mr. Prime Minister, in the words of the great leader
and even greater man Abraham Lincoln, “You cannot fool all of the people
all the time. You can only fool some of the people some of the time”.
Controlling the Media and compelling them to lie does not work for long in a
democratic society. I for one, have absolute faith in the dignity and
independence of even the poorest of our peoples and believe that anti-people
governments cannot continue only with a media show, for too long.
Please note that you cannot seek refuge in fabricated shortcomings of
previous governments to write away your sacred duties, by the country.
The people of this country expect of their Government, their President,
Cabinet of Ministers and the Prime Minister a truly durable Peace, which
will give to the Tamils, Muslims, Malays, Burghers and other peoples their
rights, while ensuring to the Sinhala people their safety and rights. I
regret to note that the present Government has failed to achieve this.
You subjugate yourself to every whim and fancy of the LTTE, whilst you have
taken no action to compensate the Tamil victims of the July 1983 riots, as
recommended by the Presidential Truth Commission appointed by me, or
protecting Democratic Tamil political leaders and their cadres or reopening
the Jaffna Library, burnt down by the previous UNP Government and rebuilt by
us, which has today become a symbol of the Democratic Tamil peoples struggle
for freedom and equality.
I would like to suggest that you attempt seriously, if it is at all
possible, to put the country before self and the desire to remain in power
at any cost.
I stand ready to assist and advice and give leadership, if you are willing,
even at this late stage, to realise what is best by the country and not only
for your self.
Yours sincerely
Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga
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Last Updated
Date: October 08, 2003 -10.30
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