“The verdict on Sri Lanka should come as a warning to other armies fighting on their own soil”, says Thursday’s editorial of Pakistan’s influential newspaper Dawn, commenting on UN’s efforts of war crimes investigation and Sri Lanka’s opposition to it. “The war was conducted by the army but had the full backing of the president who believed that Tamil Eelam was an intractable problem which could not be resolved through political means”, the Dawn said. Meanwhile, Tamil circles were commenting on the war crimes of peace brokers. The former peace facilitator Erik Solheim made a statement last month that lives would have been saved and the UN, the USA and India would have taken over the situation had the LTTE surrendered. Why didn’t he tell this possibility when hundreds of thousands took to street to stop the war, asks Dr. T. Sivakanesan, a member of Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam.
“We called upon the LTTE to come to an organized stop (or surrender). If it had happened, thousands of lives would have been saved. The war would have ended under the supervision of the UN, the United States, India or someone else. However, the LTTE rejected that call,” said the International Development Minister of Norway Mr. Erik Solheim, in an interview to the Sri Lankan Newspaper The Sunday Times, 27th June.
The LTTE would have definitely agreed to an organised stop, with full support of the Tamil masses, had there really been an offer from any third party and had it been assured publicly, Dr. Sivakanesan from Norway commented.
Like the Colombo government, the peace facilitators themselves, and the powers behind them too, seemed to have opted for the violent end of the war, as the international actors had no appetite for appropriate political justice, he further said.
Mr. Erik Solheim made similar statements earlier too that there was the possibility of a ‘federal solution’, but the details of the solution referred to by him was never known to anybody, where as the peace facilitators had succeeded in extracting from the LTTE a public commitment to “explore a political solution, founded on internal self determination based on a federal structure within a united Sri Lanka”.
The ‘peace facilitator’ now talks of ‘minority rights’ models of Indonesia and Malaysia, along with that of India.
‘War to the finish’ was a premeditated affair having several aims in mind.
Removal of the strength of Tamils before deceiving them on a political solution, placing the blame on others and using that blame for inroads into the island, are some of the aims.
Today’s paradigm of war crimes investigation, without acknowledging the political cause, make Tamil circles to think that ultimately it is the West that is going to bail out Colombo.
The interest shown in Norwegian quarters today is to see diaspora members get along with Sri Lankan diplomats and chauvinistic NGOs of Colombo, Sivakanesan further said.
Meanwhile, Colombo’s counterinsurgency elements are bidding for the Norway announced study on the failed peace process, informed circles said.
The directions war crimes investigations may take are already outlined in some way by those who have to save their skins.
Unless India comes out with drastic changes in its policy towards the Eezham Tamil national question and acts for righteous solutions, it is very likely to be in the receiving end of the game, political observers said.
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