Rajapakse under allies’ pressure

Jun 13, 2011 |

Age Correspondent

New Delhi

It is clear that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse is under pressure from his allies not to yield the land and police powers to provincial councils for fear that such devolution could excessively empower the Tamils in the north and the east. After losing their Eelam campaign, the minority Tamils would need adequate devolution of powers to be able to lead their lives with dignity and in peace.
“In India, land and police powers are devolved to the states, so why not in Sri Lanka too? Why remain suspicious about devolution of powers to the Tamils even after the Tigers are gone?” asked a Tamil leader here, requesting anonymity. “But then, denial has always been a state policy when it comes to handling the Tamil issue, Tigers or no Tigers,” he lamented.
If there was disappointment for the Indian team, it did not show. At the Saturday meeting with Mr Rajapakse, NSA Shivshankar Menon handed over a letter from PM Manmohan Singh telling him he had accepted the invitation to visit Sri Lanka. Though the actual date is yet to be worked out, it would be the first visit of an Indian Prime Minister for bilateral talks in Sri Lanka in 14 years.
Dr Singh is already under pressure from TN to act tough on the Lankan issue. Chief minister J. Jayalalithaa recently piloted a unanimous resolution in the Assembly demanding that Delhi impose economic sanctions on Sri Lanka and also pressure the UN to launch war crimes probe on the Colombo regime. The Lankan Tamil issue is expected to be high on her agenda when she arrives here on Monday to meet the PM.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/79313" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-c7b4c256bdd31f70a904bdb20e6d94f7" value="form-c7b4c256bdd31f70a904bdb20e6d94f7" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="93575642" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>