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Norway’s role will be re-defined, says Colombo

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama on Friday said the role of Norway in the peace process would be “re-defined” following the abrogation of the 2002 Cease Fire Agreement (CFA).

At a news conference here, Mr. Bogollagama said Norway had been engaged in the peace process since 2000 though he was not in a position to give an outline of its new role. He said the government was yet to approach Norway in this regard.

Mr. Bogollagama said on Thursday Sri Lanka had formally notified Oslo of its decision to terminate the CFA. “This notification was in terms of Article 4:4 of this Agreement and will take effect 14 days from the date of this notice i.e. 16th January 2008.”

Accordingly, he said, the Status of Mission Agreement (SOMA) on the Establishment and the Management of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) dated 18th March 2002 between the Royal Norwegian Government and the Government of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka would also stand terminated with effect from January 16.

The Minister said the CFA was executed by the then Ranil Wickremesinghe government without proper consultation with even the Cabinet. He said its original copy was not available with the government.

Maintaining that the termination decision had been taken after careful consideration, he said the Agreement was “seriously flawed from the very inception”.

“It was entered into without proper consultation by the government of the day, with even the Cabinet of Ministers not being privy to its contents. Legitimate concerns of the security forces had not even been taken into account. It had the effect of alienating the democratic Tamil political forces and focused solely on the LTTE.

“However, notwithstanding these shortcomings evidently made in the hope that sustainable peace could be achieved, at no stage in its six rounds of talks from Sept 2002- March 2003 with the then government did the LTTE seek to engage in any substantive political discussion aimed at moving towards a political settlement,” said the Minister.

He said the LTTE spurned all offers of discussing issues for a political settlement and continued its “duplicitous action” of escalating CFA violations.

He said the government while dealing militarily to eliminate the scourge of terrorism would spare no effort in its bid to arrive at a practical and sustainable political settlement.

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