President Mahinda Rajapaksa is a very committed leader to peace and it is up to Sri Lanka to reap the peace dividends by accelerating the reconciliation process, former US Congressman Rev. Dr. Walter E Fauntroy said.

The former US Congressman who was also Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s personal representative to President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, said during a news conference yesterday Sri Lanka should also pursue peace through non-violence in the same manner as Mahathma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela and that was the message that he wanted for Sri Lanka.

“If this country creates young Gandhis and Mandelas there would not be relapses in Sri Lanka similar to those of Egypt, Yemen and Libya and that is what was wanted in this country,” he said.

Dr. Fauntroy said that violence was all that the Sri Lankan youth had seen in the last 30 years and it was up to the government to see that image is reversed.

“Now that Sri Lanka has achieved peace with the end to the hostilities, this is the ideal time that the reconciliation process commences,” he said.

Dr. Fauntroy said that he was here to promote food, education, justice, housing and income for the people of Sri Lanka and asserted that it was in that backdrop that the reconciliation process could be ideally taken forward.