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The importance of India's support

Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh's recent statement that India is fully supportive of the Lankan peace process, puts the issue of India's solidarity with Sri Lanka in her quest for peace beyond all doubt. India is solidly behind Sri Lanka in the current bid to find a negotiated political settlement to the ethnic conflict and this factor should be counted as a clear plus in the multi-dimensional peace process. For, without India's support the correct external climate for a negotiated peace cannot be achieved.

The crucial importance of India as an external factor in the Lankan conflict was clearly underscored in the mid-Eighties when troubled Indo-Lanka relations had a negative impact on Lanka's efforts at resolving the ethnic problem. Since then, the proposition that India's support and cooperation should be obtained in peace efforts in Lanka has assumed the status of almost an axiom in constructive thinking on our ethnic issue. This is principally because attempts to disregard India's sensitivities on the ethnic problem have tended to backfire on Sri Lanka.

However, successive Indian Governments have been remarkably consistent in their backing for a just peace in Sri Lanka. In this concept of a just peace is implied the satisfaction of the legitimate aspirations of Sri Lanka's communities, within a united and geographically intact Sri Lanka.

It is important for the Lankan polity to remember these home truths in Indo-Lanka relations because there is a tendency among some local sections to blow issues relating to the LTTE out of proportion. This tendency tended to be pronounced in the wake of the LTTE leader's recent press conference.

Although clarity of perception seems to be a fundamental defect among these jaundiced sections which are now crying themselves hoarse from public platforms over alleged limitations in the peace process, the Indian Government has never suffered from it. A just peace in Sri Lanka that meets the legitimate aspirations of all its communities, within a united country, is what India wishes for Sri Lanka. This is a veritable article of faith which may never change.

Now that Indian support for a just peace is guaranteed once again, the Lanka Government should step-up the momentum even further in the peace process. The worst that could happen to us is to get bogged down in imaginary, diversionary issues that are not immediately relevant.

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