Protect national interest: JVP

Rasika Somarathna

COLOMBO: The JVP yesterday called on all patriotic forces in the country to rally together to protect the national interest.

"Terrorism continues to pose a threat to our cohesiveness and national integrity. As such all patriotic forces should come together to staunchly defend the National interest," JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe said.

Addressing a media briefing at the SLFI Amarasinghe said: "As a party which holds the national interest above anything else we have decided to focus public attention towards recent developments which we consider a threat to democracy and national integrity."

Speaking on the current developments, he said the alleged failure of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the escalation of violence leading to war, the matter of the UN peace keeping force were all inter-linked and as such all these issues should be brought under one common platform. "Only then would be able to realise the grave danger we are facing at the moment. We have no time to lose.

This should be addressed as priority number one," the JVP leader added.

"Some might think the escalation of violence and the SLMM's failure to address the issue justify the call for a UN peace keeping force, but the experience we have about UN involvement in internal problems of other countries is not always pleasant and we think that this would only aggravate the situation," the JVP leader said stressing that this move is promoted by vested interests including the LTTE to take the country to a Sudanese or Cyprus style solution.

Citing the conflict in Cyprus as similar to the one in Sri Lanka, the JVP leader said the UN came to Cyprus giving a three month ultimatum to solve the problem but even after 26 years the UN has failed to arrive at a permanent solution.

He charged that the UNP was continuing to act like a "lame duck opposition" in one of the gravest moments of the country's history making contradictory statements beneficial to the Tigers.

Citing the peace agreement signed by the UNP with the Tigers in 2002 as a major reason for the present woes, he charged that the UNP as one of country's major political parties was justifying the induction of a UN peace keeping force.

JVP Parliamentary group leader Wimal Weerawansa said the media minister's statement with regard to the Government stand was praiseworthy and called on the Government to safeguard the democratic rights of the people in the North and East which he said is suppressed by a fascist organisation at the moment. He emphasised that some NGOs and international organisations with vested interests are trying to aggravate the problem. He vowed to mobilise all patriotic forces to safeguard the country from any eventuality.

JVP General Secretary Tilvyn Silva said the LTTE's aim was to engineer a conflict between the Tamil and Sinhala communities in the South and urged for restraint.

He said there were reports that the LTTE had planned to incite communal violence at the time the Army Commandeer came under a suicide attack by getting some Tamil students in the Moratuwa and Colombo Universities to light firecrackers following the incident.

He praised the public for acting with understanding of this situation. He further added that the JVP would hold meetings islandwide to educate the public on the present situation.