President regrets UNP decision to boycott Advisory Council on Peace

[October 3, 2004 - 10.00 GMT] 

The inaugural meeting of the National Advisory Council on Peace and Reconciliation (NACPR) initiated by the President is to be held on Monday 4th October. The broad-based national forum is expected to facilitate an opportunity for the people to contribute towards a political settlement to the ongoing ethnic crisis through reconciliation.

The NACPR will comprise three standing committees, a political, a religious and a civil society that would examine views on how to bring about a negotiated settlement and peace with dignity for all communities in Sri Lanka and democracy. All political parties represented in Parliament, religious dignitaries, and leaders of civil society have been invited to attend the sessions by President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

The main opposition in Parliament the United National Party has however decided to stay away from tomorrow’s inaugural meeting. President Kumaratunga today[3rd October] wrote to the leader of the opposition expressing her disappointment at his party’s conclusion she said in her letter ‘I am rather perplexed at the reasons you provide for this unfortunate decision and sincerely hope you will reconsider this for the following reasons’.

The full text of the President’s letter;

Hon. Ranil Wickremesinghe MP.,

Leader of the Opposition,

Colombo 03.

My dear Leader of the Opposition.

I thank you for your letter dated 24th September, 2004 which reached the Presidential Secretariat on 27th September.

I and the Government are disappointed that you and your Party will not be present at the inaugural meeting of the National Advisory Council on Peace and Reconciliation (NACPR) to be held on 4th October. I am rather perplexed at the reasons you provide for this unfortunate decision and sincerely hope you will reconsider this for the following reasons.

Firstly, the effort on the part of my Government to engage the LTTE in comprehensive peace negotiations is not confined to the establishment of an interim authority which is the sole focus of your letter. While this subject may be discussed initially, we have a wider agenda to discuss, in order to address the core issues of our conflict, if we are to reach a lasting solution.

Secondly, my Government is firmly pledged to the recommencement of negotiations with the LTTE, which left the negotiating table in April 2003, while conducting negotiations with the UNF Government, led by you. We are engaged in intense dialogue with the LTTE to find solutions to the problems that caused them to walk away from the talks.

You declined my invitation to you and the UNP to participate in the National Consultation for Peace, by stating that such a consultation is not necessary at present and you urge me to commence talks with the LTTE through direct discussions of the issues arising from both sets of proposals, i.e. on the basis of the LTTE’s ISGA proposals, together with the UNF proposals presented by you in June 2003. Your proposition surprises me.

I do not understand how you expect my present Government to enter into negotiations with the LTTE on the basis, of the two proposals when the LTTE has strongly rejected your proposal many times over. I quote from Mr. Anton Balasingham’s letter to you, dated 04th June 2003 where he states that “you have failed to address the central issue raised by us” (The LTTE) and goes on further to say “The LTTE regrets to say that your suggestions are unsatisfactory and therefore unacceptable”. Mr. Balasingham also states that “The LTTE is seeking an interim administrative framework as pledged by you in the elections ……… your government is proposing a development structure with limited scope and power…….”, which the LTTE finds “unsatisfactory and unacceptable”. This view was also confirmed very strongly by the LTTE Leader, Mr. V Prabhakaran, in his heroes day speech in November 2003, where he states that the three proposals submitted by the Government, one after the other, for an interim council were rejected by the LTTE as unacceptable and unsatisfactory.

It is thus clear as crystal that you are advising me to resume negotiations with the LTTE on a basis part of which as you are fully aware, has totally been rejected by the LTTE.

Permit me, dear Sir, to take the liberty to appeal to you to make suggestions that are honest and workable.

Let me be clear – I am not seeking a consensus in the NACPR as a precondition to either begin talks with the LTTE or to make the NACPR responsible for decisions regarding the commencement and continuation of talks with the LTTE.

The NACPR will provide a consultative forum for the Government that is engaged in a process of dialogue with the LTTE, to continually keep the country and its representatives informed of the progress and issues of the Peace Process on one hand, and on the other for the Government to obtain the views of the country, mainly through its political representatives as well as from religious leaders and representatives of various interests groups.

We do not, in any way, wish to use this process of consultation through the NACPR to run away from the Governments total responsibility of seeking means of resolving the conflict of the North East.

Finally, your preference to participate in the NACPR after the commencement of talks with the LTTE, deliberately excludes your Party from valuable consultations on the one most important national issue presently before the country and the approach of the government to the negotiations which I had sincerely hoped would, perhaps for the first time in our recent history, be genuinely inclusive and transparent.

The country is aware that I have during the past ten years made numerous efforts to find ways to bring the county’s two major political parties, the UNP and the PA, to work together in the national interest – specially with regard to the ethnic conflict – and that these efforts failed to come to fruition due to the consistent rejection of each of my proposals by the UNP.

For these reasons, I do hope you will refer this matter to your Party and arrive at a consensus on the participation of your Party in this most essential national endeavour.

Yours sincerely.

Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga.

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Last Updated Date: October 03, 2004  - 10.00 GMT.