Wikileaks: Sri Lanka 'rejected rebel surrender offer'

BBC South Asia
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The Sri Lankan government rejected a surrender offer by Tamil Tiger rebels at the end of the war, reports released through the Wikileaks website say.

They say that Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa dismissed US pressure to allow a mediated surrender with the words "we're beyond that now".

The leaked US cables suggest requests for the International Red Cross to go into the war zone were refused.

Sri Lanka's government has repeatedly denied all these accusations.

The Sri Lankan civil war came to an end in May 2009 with the death of their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran after the Tamil Tigers made a last stand in the north-east of the island.

The leaked US documents - which appeared in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten - say that on 16 May 2009 the Norwegian ambassador called his US counterpart to report that he had received a phone call from Selvarasa Padmanathan - known as "KP" - stating that the rebels were prepared to surrender without conditions to a neutral third party.

Correspondents say that although Padmanathan was abroad at the time, it would not have been unusual for him as rebel head of foreign relations to make the offer.

'Energetically refused'

The documents say that the US ambassador then called the International Red Cross (ICRC) who told him that their staff were prepared to go into the conflict zone by military helicopter to mediate a surrender.

ICRC head of delegation Paul Castella is quoted in the document as saying that Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa initially agreed to the arrangement, but first wanted the names of the rebel leaders who were prepared to surrender.

But the documents say that "despite helpful efforts from Norway" the rebels failed to provide such a list.

The documents say the government rejected repeated US requests to allow the ICRC into the conflict zone to help many dead and wounded civilians there.

According to the US cables, presidential adviser Basil Rajapaksa "energetically refused" to give the ICRC permission, accusing it of failing on "three consecutive days to evacuate the wounded, even though the Additional Government Agent had said it was safe to do so".

© BBC News

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'India's support important to tackle impasse over war crime report' : SL President

Indian Express
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Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa today said that India's support was important in his government's attempt to tackle the current impasse over a report by an UN advisory panel, accusing it of committing war crimes during the last phase of conflict with the LTTE.

"India has always acted with co-operation with Sri Lanka. Our relations have been good at all times", Rajapaksa said while addressing the local heads of media institutions during his regular monthly interaction.

He was responding to a query on India's stand on the panel report which had accused both Sri Lanka and the LTTE of war crimes allegedly committed during the last phase of the military conflict that ended in May 2009.

"India will respond appropriately at the appropriate time", the Sri Lankan leader said.

The Sri Lankan president added that his government was not taking the report lightly.

"We will respond to the Secretary General in an appropriate manner", Rajapaksa said.

GL Peiris, the minister of External Affairs said that the top level Indian delegation comprising Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon and Defense Secretary Pradeep Kumar would be arriving in Colombo next week.

According to media reports, Indian would urge Colombo to speedily address the accountability and reconciliation issues raised in the report.

An Indian government statement last week said the report was being studied carefully.

The panel headed by Marzuki Darusman, a former Indonesian attorney general and his co-members, Steven Ratner, a US based attorney, Yasmin Sooka has come under heavy domestic criticism.

The government ministers have taken the lead in public protest campaigns clamming the report as an international conspiracy against Sri Lanka's sovereignty.

Significantly no attempts have been made to target the UN compound or its staff through demonstrations.

© Indian Express

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UN complicit in Sri Lanka genocide

Photo courtesy: Tamilnet.com

By Sam Pari | Green Left Weekly
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Two years ago, a war without witness was executed by the state against the Tamil people in the island of Sri Lanka.

In September 2008, after ordering all United Nations personnel, non-government organisations and media out of the Vanni region, the Sri Lankan government embarked on a vicious military campaign.

While it informed the world it was fighting the Tamil Tiger rebels and was following a “zero civilian casualty” policy, photographs, video footage and phone conversations with our relatives in the war zone told us a different story.

We watched in horror as images of injured babies, maimed pregnant women and rows of dead civilians leaked out. Hospitals were bombed. Refugee camps were shelled. Surrendering civilians were executed.

Even the International Committee of the Red Cross was blocked from saving the injured.

As members of the Tamil diaspora took to the streets, campaigning for the international community to act to stop the bloodshed, the world did nothing.

More than 100,000 Tamils rallied around the world, yet our cries fell on the bureaucrats’ deaf ears.

Kevin Rudd, then Australia's prime minister, preferred “soft diplomacy” with Sri Lanka, in contrast to his stand on Burma, Zimbabwe and Libya.

We slowly realised the UN was well aware of the high civilian casualties. Leaked satellite images revealed the UN knew of the Sri Lankan Air Force's targeted bombing and shelling of civilian locations.

Following his resignation, the former UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka, Gordon Weiss, revealed the civilian death toll could be up to 40,000, while “significant others have said that the figure may well be far higher”.

Why would the world allow civilians to be killed in such a gruesome manner?

At the time, China and Russia prevented the war in Sri Lanka being discussed at the UN Security Council. Both countries are allies of Sri Lanka, China having invested heavily there.

UN officials are said to have told Vijay Nambiar — who the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, appointed as his chief of staff — that the final death toll could exceed 20,000, but Nambiar urged his staff not to “rock the boat” by criticising the Sri Lankan government.

Witness reports later revealed senior UN officials, including Nambiar, and senior Sri Lankan officials, including the defence secretary (and brother of the President), Gotabaya Rajapaksa, were involved in the surrendering of Tamil Tiger combatants, who were later executed.

After waiting two years for an independent inquiry into this incident, Tamil rights groups have submitted their own complaint to the International Criminal Court.

When the war came to a bloody end on May 18, 2009, Sri Lankan government puppets were quick to continue the propaganda, claiming all was well in Sri Lanka, encouraging Australian tourists while discouraging Australia from accepting Tamil refugees.

The reality was different. Hundreds of thousands were held in military-run internment camps, disappearances were rife, and rape and torture occurred. There was a reason the number of Tamil refugees arriving by boats in Australia had suddenly sky-rocketed.

The unrelenting campaigning by the Tamil diaspora and human rights groups finally forced Ban Ki-Moon to establish a panel of experts last year to assess the mounting allegations of war crimes. Sri Lanka was quick to condemn this decision and banned the panel from visiting the island.

The panel's final report, submitted to Ban Ki-Moon more than a fortnight ago, has at last been published.

The panel has found allegations of war crimes to be credible and has admitted the UN failed to act to protect civilians, despite knowing about the high civilian casualty rate.

The panel has also recommended an international independent inquiry into war crimes in Sri Lanka.

Today, tens of thousands of Tamils are missing. Up to 14,000 Tamils, including 500 children, have been held for the past two years in secret prisons; no one knows if they are alive.

The Tamil homeland in the north is under military occupation and forced resettlement of Sinhalese families is taking place, changing the demography of the region.

After Rwanda, the world said “never again”. But in early 2009, what happened to the Tamils was far worse. Not only did the UN fail to act to stop the persecution of Tamil civilians — it was complicit.

Dr Sam Pari is a spokesperson for the Australian Tamil Congress.

© Green Left Weekly

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Tamil anger at new Sri Lankan envoy

Photo courtesy: Business Today

By Rebecca Thistleton | The Age
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Australia has approved the controversial appointment of a former naval commander as Sri Lanka's high commissioner, prompting Australia's Tamil community to accuse the government of protecting a war criminal.

Retired Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe was appointed as high commissioner to Australia on Friday.

Since learning of his nomination for the role earlier this year, Australia's Tamil community has lobbied the Gillard government to reject Admiral Samarasinghe in response to Sri Lanka's refusal to allow an international war crimes tribunal.
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Australian Tamil Congress spokeswoman Sam Pari said the Tamil community felt betrayed and disappointed as the appointment would give an accused war criminal diplomatic immunity.

Admiral Samarasinghe became Sri Lanka's navy commander after the 26-year war against the Tamil Tigers ended in 2009.

While no allegations of war crimes were made against him, the United Nations released a report on April 25 recommending investigations into alleged war crimes.

Federal MP John Murphy, who opposed Admiral Samarasinghe's appointment, told Parliament in February he was an ''entirely inappropriate person'' to be Sri Lanka's high commissioner to Australia.

Mr Murphy said he was representing the Sri Lankan community and the admiral's involvement with the war was concerning as he was director-general of naval operations when innocent civilians were targeted. The war is believed to have cost up to 100,000 lives.

© The Age

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ANC supports UN panel report on Sri Lanka

BBC Sinhala
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The African National Congress (ANC) has expressed its support to the UN expert panel report on accountability issues in Sri Lanka’s war against the Tamil Tigers.

The ANC, the majority party in the South African government, says it supports the recommendations made in the experts’ report that an independent body need to be established to investigate alleged war crimes committed by both the parties during the last phase of the conflict.

“We also call on the government of Sri Lanka to take immediate steps to address the core grievances of the Tamil population and engage in a genuine reconciliation process,” the statement said.

South Afriica’s Yasmin Sooka, a prominent South African jurist who served in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was among the members of the panel chaired by former Indonesian Attoney General Marzuki Darusman.

Maldives response

The Panel concluded that there were serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law committed by both the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE.

Meanwhile, the Maldives government has strongly criticised the expert panel report.

Addressing media in Colombo on Friday, Maldives Foreign Minister Dr Ahmed Naseem said that his government is “deeply concerned” about the report.

“We feel that it is not really productive for people in Sri Lanka or of Sri Lankan dissent,” he said.

The Sri Lanka government has rejected the report, describing it as “flawed” and “biased”.

© BBC Sinhala

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Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary condemns UN panel

Photo courtesy: Business Today

By A.A.M.Nizam | Asian Tribune
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The Defense Secretary, Mr. Gotabhaya Rasjapaksa has said that the Darusman panel has failed to recognize the immense steps the government has taken to bring peace and reconciliation, matched with development, to the north and north-east of the country that not too long ago was controlled with an armed iron fist by the LTTE.

He has said that within the first 12 months of the war ending, we even resettled over 350,000 displaced Tamils, an achievement that was applauded by Secretary General Ban ki-Moon himself and several international humanitarian organizations. But instead of acknowledging any of this, he has pointed that the panel has painted a wrong picture that there is an enduring legacy of bitterness still prevailing in these areas’.

The Defense Secretary has pointed out that Sri Lanka has always been a responsible and accommodating member of the United Nations, and has never failed to respond to UN requests for Sri Lankan troops to participate in peace-keeping missions or humanitarian missions such as in Haiti, and on some occasions Sri Lanka agreed to the request even when the Sri Lankan troops were stretched to the limit during the various stages of Sri Lanka’s own conflict. He has said it is very unfair for the Secretary General to pick on Sri Lanka for this sort of arbitrary treatment.

Mr. Gotabhaya has said that appointing the panel, which in turn comes out with a report that goes far beyond its original mandate, is a brazen violation of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, and the Secretary General is needlessly pushing Sri Lanka against the wall and forcing the country to seek the help of its friends in the UN Security Council like Russia and China’.

He has commended Russia for not even waiting for any formal request for help from the Sri Lankan government. He has pointed out that within two days of the report coming out, Russian Ambassador to Sri Lanka Vladmir Mikhaylov has declared in Colombo that ‘Sri Lanka had every right and obligation to do everything within its means to protect its people from terrorism. Unfortunately it seems the panel of experts went beyond its task as had been made known to our representative in New York.’

Mr. Gotabhaya has emphasized that the Secretary General should have asked the opinion of the Security Council or the General Assembly on this matter, but rather than doing so, a panel was appointed, and the decision to appoint this panel was a personal initiative of the Secretary General and taken without regarding the position of Sri Lanka as a sovereign state and a member of the UN.

He has further said thzt the panel appears to have opted for selective amnesia when it came to discussing the atrocities committed by the Tamil Tigers, while going into lengthy anguish made over the perceived sins of the Sri Lankan military.

He has said that rather than acting as a trio of advisers offering sound counsel to Ban ki-Moon, the panel comes across like three stooges offering succor to remnants of the LTTE scattered across Western capitals.

© Asian Tribune

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Indian Policy and Sri Lanka civil war: A time for Re-Evaluation.

By Sivanendran | South Asian Analysis Group
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The familiar cartoon of a man perched in a tree, busily cutting off the branch on which he is sitting, provokes varied reactions. Some find it highly amusing; others, recognising perhaps a predicament in which they have occasionally found themselves, can manage only a wry smile. Indian foreign policy mandarins, who must be questioning their own competence in managing the Sri Lankan relationship, must be included in the latter category. The UN expert panel’s report on Sri Lanka’s war crimes hits many buttons at the core of these issues and it has serious implications for the many visits made across the Palk Straits by the Indian foreign policy establishment during this war.

The conflict in Sri Lanka is a sensitive foreign policy issue for any Indian Administration. Since 1983, different Indian administrations have given different degrees of priority to the continuing civil war in Sri Lanka. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was concerned about the condition of the Tamils in Sri Lanka and the consequent flow of Tamil refugees into India driven by the repeated pogroms in the island. She strengthened the Tamils and enabled them to resist their oppression. In this, she was ably supported by Chief Minister M. G. Ramachandran of Tamil Nadu. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi continued with her policies and promoted an interim solution commonly referred to as the Indo Sri Lanka Accord of 1987 and the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution.

Indo Lanka Accord

This was the first international effort to bring peace to Sri Lanka. India virtually imposed this solution on the recalcitrant warring parties. The Accord, brokered primarily by India, sought to end the conflict in Sri Lanka, which had cost thousands of lives and created several thousands of refugees and displaced persons. It set up Sri Lanka’s current political structure of provincial councils with an ethnically-based Northeast "entity" and a weak power sharing arrangement. It resulted in the deployment of Indian Peace Keeping Force, which was charged with providing a secure environment for the implementation of the peace agreement.

But, both the LTTE and the Jayawardene regime were not in sympathy with the objectives of the Accord and in practise they honoured it, in its breach. Although neither India nor Sri Lanka had renounced the Accord, the bloody and complex events that followed the Accord have deposited it at the edge of oblivion. There are many reasons for the failure of the accord and it has to be addressed elsewhere. But suffice to state that, President Premadasa’s agreement with the LTTE to order the Indian troops to be withdrawn from Sri Lanka by the end of December 1989 sealed the fate of that peace process.

Far more important than any resolution to the Sri Lankan conflict, however, remains the strategic relationship between the India and Sri Lanka. Differences in approaches to solving the ethnic problem have opened political fissures in their relationship with both the Tamils and the Sinhala political leaders.

The upshot of all this was, from an Indian perspective, is that India has had enough. Without no political consensus in India or in Sri Lanka for any Indian involvement, which was made worse by the death of Indian soldiers on foreign soil, the whole Sri Lanka policy was in tatters. This was compounded by the assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. After this, India and Indians lost sympathy for the Ealam Tamil cause and had no interest to be engaged again in the National Question threatening Sri Lanka. The killing of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is stamped on the psyche of the people of India, causing them to maintain a "hands off" approach to the conflict.

The Aftermath

Since Sri Lanka attained independence in 1948, the Tamils have been struggling for over 50 years to gain their fundamental democratic rights. The agitations of the Tamils have sometimes resulted in agreements of some sort described as Banda – Chelva Pact of 1957 and the |Dudley Chelva Pact of 1966. All these pacts were unilaterally abrogated by the Sinhala government. So it was no surprise that GOSL conspired to undermine and destroy the Accord which for the first time reached the Statute book and gave a measure of self governance for the Tamil people.

In more than twenty years since the Accord, the Tamil people have been subjected to sharply increased violence and significantly increased deprivation in Sri Lanka, including restricted freedom of movement, resulting in the dramatic increase in the number of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees abroad, and the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons within Sri Lanka.

The Sri Lankan government had made no attempt to promote greater unity in the country since then and there is no progress on reforms of government. All the institutions of a modern democratic state have been corrupted in Sri Lanka and overall there is no effort to create an integrated and stable united Sri Lanka. The reform efforts under the Accord continued to be met by obstructionism or passivity by the Sinhala nationalist parties that control the government at all levels. Some observers assert that the cumbersome governing institutions set up under the Accord are unworkable. But was any attempt made to sincerely implement the accord?

The period between July 1987 and December 1989 is one of the darkest chapters of Sri Lankan Tamils. In 1983 the Tamils of Sri Lanka needed Indian support in order to regain their democratic rights. Although all the militant groups identified the creation of a separate state of Ealam as the most favoured solution, LTTE was stubborn in refusing to accept anything else, even as an interim solution. On the other hand the Government of Sri Lanka did not wish to concede any devolutionary powers for the self governance of the Tamils. The Tamil representatives declared that the basis for any settlement should be based on the four principles they declared at Thimpu in July 1985. Henceforth, Indian government was occupied for more than a year with the task of translating Thimpu principles into concrete results. Their efforts – that is from Thimpu through the Bhandari round of talks to operation Poomalai - resulted in the Indo Lanka Accord and the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution. These changes were extracted by a hard negotiation struggle between the Indian and the Sri Lankan governments.

Unfortunately, neither the LTTE nor the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) gave it a chance to work. This peace process was killed in its gestation. Retrospectively, I am sure that the Tamils of the Northeast Sri Lanka and the Sinhalese from South Sri Lanka must be regretting that they did not even give the process of the Accord a chance. This process might have brought peace in 1987 and spared the death and destruction in both the communities. This was the best possible deal for a beleaguered Tamil population at that time, and could have provided some foundation for their self governance, provided all parties implemented the accord in accordance with its spirit. Alas, that was not to be. Neither the LTTE nor the Premadasa government wanted the Northeast Provincial government to succeed. The narrow ambitions of the LTTE and the short-sightedness of a chauvinistic Sinhala leadership sought to subvert the spirit of the Accord until it was truly buried without trace.

Finally, all Sri Lankan leaders both Sinhala and Tamil seem bereft of vision -- vision inspired by our most basic principles. Sinhala leaders, and their political class, seem unable to look beyond tactical considerations and short-term needs. They have little tolerance for others in their society and, at the end of the day, little confidence in themselves.

Indo-Sri Lankan relationship since Accord

With the withdrawal of the IPKF mission, India’s leverage to influence Sri Lankan affairs declined. With its negative experience of the peace process India also became a passive onlooker of the affairs in the island. As the island began to get bogged down in a protracted civil war successive Indian administrations began to move away from their active involvement with the National Question in Sri Lanka and prioritised other parallel objectives such as the development of closer ties with Sri Lanka on economic, commercial, trade and military matters.

The battered Indo-Sri Lanka relationship was repaired during President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s administration. But the civil war continued in Sri Lanka requiring additional economic, military and diplomatic inputs. As India kept aloof from the evolving situation in the island other countries such as China, Pakistan, and Iran filled the void. These countries financed and supplied the necessary military hardware to prosecute the war. None of these countries were interested in helping to solve the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka. But they provided the means to end the war. During this period, the divergence of the strategic aims between Delhi and LTTE opened up a wide chasm between India and the Tamils of Sri Lanka.

Another important issue is whether Sri Lanka is still important to Indian interests. Some say that pressing Indian commitments in other countries and regions argue for transferring their attention away from Sri Lanka where progress is painstakingly slow. Others believe that India still has a stake in Sri Lanka’s stability, as part of building an Asia "whole, prosperous and free," the overarching Indian objective in the region. They say continued Indian involvement in Sri Lanka may be needed to arrest its decline, as well as to make sure that it is not used as a haven for organized crime or by adventurists.

India and the War

During the last stages of the war, the rest of the world stood by idly while the Tamils of Sri Lanka were murdered, thrown into concentration camps and ethnically cleansed in thousands. This disgraceful passivity in the face of atrocities of WW II imagery occurred in the immediate aftermath Rwanda and Bosnia. History now is repeating itself. Innocent Tamil civilians were subjected to death by a thousand cuts similar to what was the fate of Sarajevo's citizens by the state forces and the paramilitaries. The Tamil areas are now being cleansed. Opponents of the regime in Sri Lanka are suffering systematic abuse across the country. Mullivaikal seems destined to be cast as Srebrenica in this recasting of the Bosnian tragic drama.

Some things are different. For one thing, the cluttered diplomatic field in Sri Lanka included the United Nations, the European Union in cameo roles. The Indian foreign policy establishment consisting of External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Foreign Secretary Shiva Shankar Menon and National Security Advisor Mr Narayanan were constant visitors to Sri Lanka during this phase. There is no game of organizational pass the hot potato to excuse negligent behaviour. The UN, West's and India’s high blown rhetoric ("terrorism must be wiped out" – George Bush) was out of sync with a pusillanimous policy of restricted assistance to those very victims who have been explicitly identified as justifying and requiring immediate assistance. Many excuses are offered, but they all supported the Sri Lankan state’s violence against the Tamils, but taken together they cannot explain the Alliance's failure to do what it is committed to do, that is to protect humanity, and which it is obviously capable of doing. Therein lays the problem.

What was India’s foreign policy objective?

In retrospect the evidence that is available after the war and the UN Expert panel report raises many questions about the dynamics of some of the players in the war. India being the neighbouring regional power has a measure of responsibility to bring order into region in chaos. In this respect it is legitimate in asking what the role of India in this war was. There were a large number of meetings between India and the Sri Lankans directly involved in prosecuting the war. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse acknowledged repeatedly, that the Indian contribution for the war was significant, Further, a week after the defeat of the LTTE, India helped to marshal the members of the UN Human Rights council in May 2009 to pass a deeply flawed resolution ignoring calls for an international investigation into the alleged abuses during the fighting and other pressing human rights concerns. "The Human Rights Council did not even express its concern for the hundreds of thousands of people facing indefinite detention in government camps," said Juliette de Rivero, Geneva advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "The council ignored urgent needs and wasted an important chance to promote human rights."

In the circumstances a lot of questions spring to my mind. Was protecting Sri Lankan Tamils a policy objective of India consistent with the policies under the regimes of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi? The report of the Secretary General’s expert panel on Sri Lanka, discloses a shocking state of affairs in Sri Lanka during this period. Was India aware of these horrors? If not, why not? Whilst the Sri Lankan forces marched on to Mullivaikal unimpeded the military vowed to rout them out like rats. Were any concerns expressed to the Sri Lankans about the innocent victims and assurances obtained? Were the Indians deceived by the Rajapakse’s? Did they make any desperate appeals to the Sri Lankans to stop the slaughter of the innocents? Did the Indians just believe all the assurances given by Rajapakse or did they subsequently monitor the regimes behaviour. Or do the Indians plead an inability to halt the assaults on the besieged people shielded by a sovereign state? Did they issue any warnings to the Sri Lankans of inappropriate behaviour by a member belonging to the comity of nations?

Policy Re-evaluation

This feckless performance is all the more unacceptable given the context of the history of involvement in this ethnic dispute. The outcome of this international concern is unclear. All that can be said is that Indian policy during this period will be scrupulously scrutinised. India will have to live with its effects for some years to come. Sri Lankans are themselves uneasy about what the future holds. The equivocation that has marked their response to the unforeseen upheaval is not contained. It can be said for sure that Indian policy on Sri Lanka also cannot return to the status quo ante. It needs re-evaluation.

© SAAG

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India to finance major harbour project in Sri Lanka

IANS | AOL News
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India will financially assist Sri Lanka to develop Northern Jaffna peninsula's biggest harbour that will facilitate the transportation of goods from nearby Indian ports, said a Sri Lankan official here.

The Indian government has agreed to provide financial assistance to develop Kankasanthurai (KKS) Harbour in two phases.KKS harbour is one of the 10 sea and air entry points to the country.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who holds the finance portfolio, had presented the proposal for KKS Harbour Development to the cabinet.

Sri Lanka High Commission's Minister-Counsellor Sugeeswara Senadhira said the cabinet of ministers gave the green signal to the KKS Harbour Development Project last week.

The project, to be carried out in two phases, will involve repairs to the existing breakwater, jetty and deepening of the harbour. A new breakwater will also be constructed.

'A Memorandum of Understanding with the Indian government to carry out the development of the port is to be signed shortly,' Senadhira told IANS.

The harbour's development will enable economic and social development of the war-torn North.

Authorities said the development of KKS harbour will facilitate the transportation of goods from nearby Indian ports.

During the armed conflict between the government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that lasted more than 20 years, infrastructure development in the LTTE-controlled areas remained stalled and existing infrastructures were damaged.

After the conflict came to an end in May 2009, the government started major reconstruction programmes in the North and the East. India is funding some of the projects.

© Indo Asian News Service

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Indian railway project in Sri Lanka in full steam

By R. K. Radhakrishnan | The Hindu
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With an Indian de-mining team clearing the 107-km stretch of a railway alignment from Medawachchiya to Talaimannar in record time, the Indian Railway Construction Corporation (Ircon) has shifted gears on the construction of a railway line. Ircon is aiming to complete the sections allocated to it in a year-and-a-half.

When the ISO-certified de-mining team, Horizon, began its work about eight months ago, it faced a host of obstacles. “We did not know where the alignment was,” said Shashikant Pitre, chairman, Horizon Group. The LTTE had destroyed the alignment and bridges and had taken away the railway track. “The ground was heavily compacted with gravel making the raking to a depth of 15 cm quite difficult,” he added.

This was not the only problem. Over the years, there has been heavy water logging in some of the areas and there were metal remnants all over the alignment. “The presence of metals in such large quantities meant that we will not be able to make use of metal detectors,” said Mr. Pitre, who retired as a Major-General from the Indian Army.

There were other problems too. All the bridges, major and minor, had been destroyed. This often meant long detours. “We faced serious logistical problems in the transport of people and heavy equipment,” said Anil Srivastava, Horizon Project Manager in Sri Lanka. The actual de-mining took only 25 per cent of the eight months. “From this you can understand how big and serious the logistical problems were. The remaining time was spent on surveys, clearance and marking,” added Mr. Srivastava, a former Colonel with the Indian Army.

As per the contract, Horizon cleared 15 metres from a delineated centre line to either side. In places where stations have been planned this distance goes up to 50 metres clearance. The team said there were only three major confirmed hazard areas, totalling 18,000 square metres. One was between Cheddikulam and Madhu, another between Madhu and Manakkulam and a third between Manakkulam and Mannar.

Horizon, established in 2001 by a few retired Indian Army officers, has been working in Sri Lanka since 2003. So far it has cleared an area of 96 sq.km. and released a total area of 456 sq.km. for rehabilitation. In the process, it has recovered a total of 1,00,444 devices, comprising 44,000 mines and UXOs (unexploded ordnance).

There are two Indian de-mining teams operating in Sri Lanka. The larger of the two, Sarvatra, has so far released a land area close to 1,300 sq.km. in the districts of Mannar, Mullativu and Batticaloa.

During 2010 Sarvatra also cleared almost three times as much as its nearest civil demining rival, the British charitable organisation called MAG.

During 2010 alone, Sarvatra cleared more than four million square metres, destroying more than 40,000 explosive devices, said Brigadier (retired) S.S. Brar, CEO of Sarvatra.

© The Hindu

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Sri Lanka war commission seeks term extension

PTI | Zee News
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Sri Lanka's reconciliation commission, appointed last year to look into the last seven years of the war with the LTTE, has sought an extension of term to prepare its report.

The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was set to end its term on May 15 but its spokeperson said that the large amount of evidence it is dealing with requires more time to conclude the job.

"Our term was due to end on May 15. But in view of the large volumes of evidence that we have recorded both orally and in writing we have been forced to ask for more time to prepare our report," LLRC's media spokesman Lakshman Wickremasinghe said today.

He said the commission had written to President Mahinda Rajapaksa last week to ask for the time extension. The LLRC was appointed by Rajapaksa a year ago to report on the conflict between February 2002 and May 2009 that ended with the military defeat of the LTTE.

Its demand for term extension comes after a UN advisory panel report, that found both the military and the LTTE culpable in war crimes, raised tempers in Sri Lanka.

Wickremasinghe, however, said the UN panel report was no consideration when making the decision to ask for the extension of time.

The three-member UN panel report which has asked for an independent investigation into alleged war crimes committed by both the government and the LTTE has said "the mandate of the LLRC as well as its work and methodology to date are not tailored to investigating allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, or to examining the root causes of the decades long conflict".

Sri Lanka, however, maintains that the LLRC has been mandated to serve the accountability aspect of the conflict and its findings would be treated with the seriousness they deserve.

© Zee News

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