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Kadirgamar angry over tone of Bala's letter to Prime Minister

by Uditha Kumarasinghe

The tone of the letter adopted by the LTTE through its theoretician Anton Balasingham borders on the contemptuous. This is not the way to write or deal with the elected Prime Minister of a sovereign state, Presidential Advisor Lakshman Kadiragamar told the PA weekly media briefing yesterday.

"Actually this not a party political point that we are making at all. Every time I read this letter, I get deeply disturbed and almost angry at the way in which Balasingham acting on behalf of the LTTE is writing to and dealing with the sovereign Government of Sri Lanka."

He said even in tough negotiations, there is at least a modicum of proprietary and niceties in the use of language. The LTTE seems to have abandoned that kind of approach completely. Theirs' is an approach akin to a school master who seems to say" I asked you to write an essay on one particular subject, but you have come with something which I did not ask you to write at all," he said.

The former Foreign Minister said the response that the Government gets from Balasingham is always in tough language. The distance is very far and coming back to the centre is not very easy. If the LTTE is taking this stand, they are doing it for very deliberate reasons. Therefore, the people of the country must ask what are they really saying.

The international donor community is prepared to offer a large amount of money to Sri Lanka. The LTTE having gone some distance down the road now suddenly says that they are not prepared to be dominated or supervised by the donor community. Whose money is this? "The donor community will come and put the money on the table and go. How can anybody do that."

"Nobody really knows even the structure of the Tokyo conference. Certainly, the President does not know.

However, some money will be committed to the North and East." Kadiragamar said.

He said it was very important to know what proposals the LTTE made to the Government. Nobody knows today. However, Balasingham categorically says that his leadership proposed an interim administrative framework and innovative new structure. Interim administration is a very far reaching event on the destiny of the country, Kadiragamar said.

There are some misconceptions on the interim administration idea. It is also said that President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga also offered an interim administration. But it was very clear that the only type of interim administration that she offered was within the Constitution of Sri Lanka. The PA draft constitution of 2000, chapter 28, specifically deals with an interim administration. An interim truly means a step towards finality. Interim is the opposite of final. Therefore, the interim administration means an administration that is going to work towards the implementation of the final solution.

"You can't have an interim administration with a standing Army and a standing Navy. How can any sovereign state give an interim administration and allow it to be dominated by the LTTE as they want it?. The whole world knows the LTTE has a standing army and standing navy. So if we give an interim administration, the LTTE is going to have a legal Army and Navy. No sovereign state can do this. The stand of the PA is that the way to deal with this matter is to quickly go into the core issues and fundamentally the structure of the state. If we are able to find a political solution quicker rather than later, an interim administration is not a serious problem.

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