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Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 5.59 GMT |
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Peace Secretariat astonished at UN Secy-General’s
remarks |
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The Sri Lankan Peace Secretariat views with
some astonishment what purport to be
highlights of a press briefing by the
Secretary General of the United Nations in
which he seems to be expressing concerns
about recent military activities in Sri
Lanka . Though ostensibly his worries are
for civilians, the exhortations about ‘the
principal of proportionality and the
selection of targets’ seem intended to send
a message, said a statement issued by Prof.
Rajiva Wijesinha, Secretary General,
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace
Process (SCOPP) – Sri Lanka.
“Unfortunately, the Secretary General may
not have realized that his remarks could be
used to advantage by the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam who will use any weapon to
hand,” the statement added.
Full text of the Statement:
The Sri Lankan Peace Secretariat views with
some astonishment what purport to be
highlights of a press briefing by the
Secretary General of the United Nations in
which he seems to be expressing concerns
about recent military activities in Sri
Lanka . Though ostensibly his worries are
for civilians, the exhortations about ‘the
principal of proportionality and the
selection of targets’ seem intended to send
a message.
Since there have been hardly any civilian
casualties during the recent offensives in
Sri Lanka, it is possible that the Secretary
General was prompted by reports of large
numbers of civilian casualties in other
theatres of war, which misled him into
believing that all forces fighting terrorism
are alike. It is to be hoped however that,
even while he might want to send a message
to other countries, he will study the Sri
Lankan situation carefully in the future.
Perhaps, with knowledge there will come
wisdom, and he will publicly acknowledge the
extraordinarily good record of the Sri
Lankan forces in this regard, their careful
selection of military targets, the paucity
of even collateral damage.
Unfortunately, the Secretary General may not
have realized that his remarks could be used
to advantage by the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam who will use any weapon to hand,
including an innocent Secretary General, to
halt the advance of Sri Lankan forces. They
will relish that he made these remarks
during a briefing on ‘the victims of
terrorism’. The impression created is that
terrorism comes in different grades, and
that some terrorists are not as heinous as
those who struggle against them.
It is obviously not a coincidence that the
victims of Tiger terrorism, in India or Sri
Lanka , or even in Britain , were not
amongst the four individuals chosen to
speak. The terrorism highlighted at the
event was of a sort that a particular world
view finds abhorrent, not understanding or
not choosing to understand the
interconnected nature of terrorism. It is
unfortunate that the United Nations should
lend itself to such selectivity, and that
the advisers of the Secretary General did
not ensure that people in the rest of the
world who suffer from terrorism also need a
voice.
Recently SAARC, the South Asian Association
for Regional Cooperation, made clear the
need for solidarity in dealing with
terrorism. It would be immensely sad if, in
this age of globalization, the Secretary
General ignored the need for consensus based
on principles, and instead allowed himself
to pursue selective agendas. Sadly, by
gratuitously introducing ‘the importance of
a negotiated settlement to the political
problems facing Sri Lanka’, he betrays the
rationale of the statement, which was
pressed for by the ‘Interagency Group’ in
Colombo, an amorphous group of NGOs, some of
whom succeeded last month in allowing 38
vehicles to be taken over by Tiger
terrorists.
Sri Lanka knows very well that a negotiated
settlement is needed for our political
problems, and that is why we are negotiating
with democratic Tamil forces which have come
into the political process. Twenty years
ago, the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
negotiated a settlement, only to find the
Tigers renege on it, and kill him some years
later. Successive Sri Lankan governments
have tried to negotiate with the Tigers,
only to have them strengthen their military
forces during ceasefires and then attack
with a vengeance when they thought
governments were weak. This time round,
having violated the Ceasefire nearly 4000
times, according to the Scandinavian
monitors (as opposed to less than a tenth of
that figure for the Sri Lankan government),
they refused repeated invitations to return
to talks.
Now that the Sri Lankan government is
pursuing a political solution with
pluralistic democratic Tamil forces, while
striving to eliminate terrorism, the Tigers
have to clutch at straws. There is no doubt
that the Secretary General’s doubtless well
meant advice will soon reverberate in
terrorist websites. We can only hope that
others who have suffered from terrorism will
make it clear that, if this happens, some
clarification is necessary for the sake of
the principles on which the United Nations
was founded.
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