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Rajapaksa, Solheim hold talks

B. Muralidhar Reddy

COLOMBO: Amid growing international pressure to halt human rights violations and put the peace process back on track, Norwegian peace facilitator Erik Solheim called on Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday in Geneva for a "discussion on the current situation" in the island.

Mr. Rajapaksa is currently in Geneva to attend the 96th International Labour Organisation (ILO) conference, where he delivered the keynote address on Friday. Ministers Mahinda Samarasinghe, Douglas Devananda and Keheliya Rambukwella and President's Secretary Lalith Weeratunga also participated in the discussion with Mr. Solheim. The Norwegian delegation included special envoy Jon Hanssen Bauer.

Details of the discussion have not been made public. For several weeks now, there are strains between the Sri Lanka Government and Norway over a number of issues related to ceasefire violations and the conduct of Tamil Tigers. A few days ago, Colombo advised the Norwegian Ambassador to Sri Lanka not to travel to Kilinochchi on security grounds.

The Geneva discussion was held before Mr. Rajapaksa's address at the ILO conference, at which he reiterated his Government's commitment to spare no room for terrorism.

"Terrorism has no place in the contemporary world. As a Government, we are not prepared to, at any cost to, bow down to terrorism," he told the conference. "There can be no room for extremism, and even less for violence.

"However, we are determined that political objectives must be realised through negotiation and dialogue and through compromise," Mr. Rajapaksa said. He told the conference that one of the biggest challenges confronting the Government's carefully developed social institutions is the threat of terrorism, which is today a matter of global concern.

"A ruthless terrorist group, the LTTE, continues to challenge us, determined to force us to compromise on the standards that we have developed over the years."

He complained that there is a "misunderstanding and false propaganda" that his Government was involved in ethnic cleansing. "This is absolutely false. I must remind this august assembly that it is the LTTE which resorted to heavy ethnic cleansing from the early 1980s. They evicted all the Muslims and the Sinhalese from the North."

Separately, meeting with Mr. Rajapaksa the Secretary-General of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) expressed serious concern about the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, including, renewed patterns of disappearances and targeted killings of civilians, as well as shrinking space for civil society.

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