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Terrorists cause mass destruction with or without chemical weapons- Prime Minister

Terrorists cause enough death and mass destruction with or without any weapons of mass destruction or chemical weapons, which the world is trying to make a thing of the past, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka said yesterday.

The Prime Minister was addressing the Meeting of the National Authorities and Parliamentarians in Asia on the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

“Chemical weapons are weapons of terrorism. There are no peaceful uses of chemical weapons. Hence it is surely related to the menace of terrorism,” he said.

He said as far as the Government is aware there are no chemical weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka has been picked for the summit considering its commitment and the role it has played towards the prevention and prohibition of chemical weapons and their use.

Wickramanayaka said “We have, hiding in parts of our country the world’s most ruthless terrorists as described by the American FBI.

Therefore we have learnt to be always alert and be prepared.”

“This is not to say that our local terrorists, whose terrorist acts for the last three decades or so has been directed only against our people with the exception of the assassination of former Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi - have chemical weapons. We do not know,” he said.

“I am happy to be able to tell you that these terrorists, the LTTE are on their last legs.

Our Security Forces have cornered them in their holes in a stretch of wilderness in the North of our country,” the Premier said.

Reflecting on Weapons of mass destruction he said , it was terrorism when the British used gas to kill hundreds of Kurdish people in their wars in West Asia or in the Middle East early last century.

“It was terrorism when an atom bomb was dropped in Hiroshima Nagasaki killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese. Those were weapons of mass destruction. That was terrorism”.

Saddam Hussein of Iraq was accused of possessing chemical weapons, and was later to hanged despite the testimony of their own inspectors that there were no such weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he said,.

“These are the people who are now questioning our human rights records at a time we are fighting against the world’s most ruthless terrorist outfit.”

He said: “The LTTE may or may not have chemical weapons, but they have caused and are causing enough death and mass destruction with or without them.”

The Chemical Weapons Convention was adopted in 1992 by the UN General Assembly in its resolution entitled Convention on the Development, Production Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction.

Sri Lanka ratified the Convention on August 19, 1994. The Act for the implementation of the Convention in Sri Lanka was passed in 2007. It is now in force.

 

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