Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Minister G. L Peiris on Sunday set his face against “foreign intervention” in the country’s ongoing reconciliation process.
“At this stage, there must not be [any] imputation of mala fides to a sovereign government,” said Prof. Peiris at a plenary session of the ninth Asia Security Summit, organised here by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Fielding a volley of questions after he spoke on the theme of “counter-insurgency and strengthening governance”, he said “we do not think that there is any need for foreign intervention at this point”. He had informed United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that “further down the road, if there are deficiencies or shortcomings that become apparent, then we will certainly not be averse to talking to the U.N. system in order to get whatever support we think we need”.
Prof. Peiris emphasised that “the mood of the Sinhala people is entirely conducive to the implementation of a fair solution”, which could be fashioned through the efforts now under way. For or the first time in 25 years, a Sri Lankan government “has [also] the legal capability to change the Constitution.”
Urging the Sri Lankan Tamil political parties to “make a vigorous input into the processes of political reform” in the present post-conflict phase, he said “we don’t wish to add yet another leaf to the thicket” of past proposals. And, “our message to the Diaspora in the western world and elsewhere is that they [too] have a dynamic role to play … we are telling them to take part in the plans that are now afoot to build infrastructure in the North and East in Sri Lanka.”
A “home-grown, home-spun mechanism” was now being put in place to fashion a political solution and usher in economic renaissance. Without any external pressure, “we have now expunged from the statute books of Sri Lanka more than 70 per cent of the emergency regulations, under which the country was governed for the last five years.”
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