Loganathan appointed SCOPP Deputy Secretary General

COLOMBO: Ketheshwaran Loganathan, 54, has been appointed the Deputy Secretary General of the Secretariat for the Coordination of the Peace Process (SCOPP). He will assume duties with immediate effect.

He recently resigned from the Board of Directors of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) and as the Head of its Peace and Conflict Analysis Unit.

Loganathan received his Bachelors Degree in Business Administration from Georgetown University, Washington D.C (1975) and M.A in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands (1984-85).

His initial research interests centred on issues relating to development and under-development while working in Colombo at the Marga Institute (1977-79) and later at the Social Scientists' Association (1979-81).

From 1981-83 he was based in Jaffna and served in the Board of the Consultancy, Finance and Development Ltd for the economic development of the North and East, founded by his late father and the first Sri Lankan General Manager of the Bank of Ceylon after nationalisation, Chelliah Loganathan.

The post-1983 heightening of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka compelled Loganathan to drop out of the academic and professional mainstream and become an active member of the Tamil militant movement as a spokesman and negotiator and was based in India from 1985-88.

He was a member of the Tamil delegation at the Thimpu Peace Talks of 1985 and played a role in subsequent initiatives leading to the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987. He also contributed in the deliberations before the Mangala Moonesinghe Parliamentary Select Committee in the early 90s.

He left political activism and re-entered the academic and professional mainstream in 1995 and authored the book, Sri Lanka:Lost Opportunities - Past Attempts at Resolving the Ethnic Conflict while serving as a Research Consultant at the Centre for Policy Research & Analysis(CEPRA), University of Colombo in 1996.

He was also awarded the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship in Journalism for 1998-99 while serving as the Editorial Consultant to The Weekend Express.

During his Fellowship, he was affiliated to the College of Journalism, University of Maryland, USA.

Loganathan's writings and public discourses on the Sri Lankan peace process have focused on the challenges of conflict transformation with a heavy emphasis on a just peace settlement for all Peoples of Sri Lanka based on democracy, pluralism and power sharing.