The Hindu : International : 'Terrorism a global priority'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 22, 2004

International

International

'Terrorism a global priority'

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

NEW YORK, SEPT. 21. The spread of terrorism has "at last sent a wake up call" to the developed world to the problems that the Third World faced alone for many years. "Terrorism may outweigh nuclear proliferation as the most fundamentally dangerous political phenomenon of our age. The international community must continue to place the fight against terrorism and the resolution of its causes on the top of its agenda," says the President of Sri Lanka, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga.

In an address to the Asia Society here on "Conflict Resolution and Peace Building: Lessons from Sri Lanka," Ms. Kumaratunga said the most powerful nations had to recognise that the pursuit of their regional and international interests had to occupy "a back seat" when searching for solutions to conflicts raging in some parts of the world.

Tracing conflict resolution down the ages, Ms. Kumaratunga said the subject was not new. "It has only been packaged differently in our age." Sri Lanka has attempted since 1994 to adopt a "new strategy and radically different attitudes" to the resolution of the country's problem, she said.

Devolution of power

Ms. Kumaratunga said the solution was in seeking alternatives "to the concept of a monolithic unitary state" and the Government was looking at an extensive form of devolution of power with a high level of democratic participation in decision making, law making and governance" by the regional authorities or the devolved units.

"We do not believe that the dismemberment of the Sri Lankan State, demanded by the LTTE through the employment of terrorist means would in anyway be a solution to the Tamil peoples problems," she remarked.

"We have embarked on a bold experiment in Sri Lanka. We are engaging one of the world's most ruthless and anti-democratic organisations which employs violent terrorist means, in a process of dialogue in a search for a peaceful solution to the conflict," she said.

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