President calls for full empowerment of women

From Rodney Martinesz in Beijing

President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga yesterday stressed the need for nations to ensure that their development benefits impact in equal measure on men, women and children.

"Sri Lanka has shown good growth rates but we cannot measure development only in terms of growth figures," the President said, delivering the keynote address at the opening ceremony of the Tenth Anniversary commemoration meeting of the Beijing Women's Conference at the Fujian Hall of the Great Hall of China.

President Kumaratunga underlined that only a fundamental restructuring of society and its decision making bodies at both national and international levels could really ensure the full empowerment of women and their role as equal partners in all aspects of human endeavour.

There is clearly a need to ensure women become part and parcel of decision making processes to enable them achieve a genuinely equitable role, the President told delegates from 98 countries that packed the Fujian Hall.

This, the President stressed, should not only be ensured politically, at periodic elections, but also continuously in families, villages, neighbourhoods' in political parties, in the business sector and civil society.

"They should not be passive participants in the process, but an integral part of the machinery of power," the President said.She bemoaned "the sad fact that women continue to be marginalised even within the very process of so called development".

"Women still do not have a decisive role although they are deeply involved in every strand of the fabric of human life."

"What we need is a focus on a shared partnership and leadership in the new millennium. The hand that rocks the cradle could no doubt contribute much to heal the wounds and smooth the conflicts in our troubled world," the President told the delegates.

President Kumaratunga stressed the message contained in the Beijing Platform of Action that nations should measure and judge the advancement of women not in isolation but in relation to how they stand in all aspects of life with their male counterparts.

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President has fruitful talks on top projects

From Rodney Martinesz in Beijing

President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga yesterday held fruitful discussions on two important projects heavily impacting on Sri Lanka's national economy.

The first of these discussions with Wang Shihong, head of the China, Auanqiu contracting and Engineering Corporation, was in connection with the Hambantota oil storage project and phosphate mining.

The other meeting and the most important was with President of the China National Machinery and Equipment Import and Export Corp Xie Bao on the Norachcholai Coal Power Project. According to a Presidential spokesman in Beijing, both meetings concluded on a successful note from Sri Lanka's point of view.

Earlier, President Kumaratunga also met Minister of National Defence Cao Gangchuan and held an audience with Deng Pufang, son of the architect of modern China, Deng Xioping and his daughter at the State Guest House. The President later in the evening attended a banquet hosted by Vice Prime Minister Wu Yi for participants at yesterday's Beijing Women's Conference.
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