Sri Lanka says tough stance needed to make peace

Washington, June 23: Sri Lanka, which has suffered cuts in Western aid over alleged human-rights abuses in its fight against separatists, needs to show strength in order to forge a political solution to ethnic strife, Colombo's trade minister said.

Minister of Export Development and International Trade G L Peiris said his Indian Ocean island country is taking the fight to the separatist Tamil Tigers to ''create confidence in the people that the government is speaking from a position of strength'' when it one day moves to make political compromises.

''There really has to be a military response to terrorism, but there's no contradiction between that stance and our clear acknowledgment of the fact that a political process is necessary,'' Peiris said in an interview in Washington yesterday.

Both Britain and the United States have suspended some aid to Sri Lanka this year citing rights abuse concerns, and the UN World Food Program slapped conditions on food aid to avoid war refugees being resettled against their will.

Suspected Tamil Tigers have launched a series of deadly attacks in recent months that have killed hundreds of people amid a new phase of a civil war that has killed nearly 70,000 people since 1983.

Political Solution Requires Toughness

Peiris, who played a key role in an ultimately ill-fated cease-fire and peace talks early in this decade, said the reversion to war taught Sri Lanka that it needed to be tough militarily to win majority Sinhalese political support for political compromises with the minority Tamil community.

''There must be no lurking fear in their minds that they're vulnerable to attack by the (Tamil Tigers), and that feeling of security must be established in the minds of the people before any of this can really work on the ground,'' he said.

Speaking ahead of meetings with US State Department and trade officials, Peiris stopped short of criticizing the decision to trim some aid over human rights concerns. But he said they made the job of seeking peace more difficult.

''A political solution is going to be made much, much more difficult than it needs to be if there is economic adversity and deprivation,'' he said.

''If the country's squeezed and if the resources are cut off, you are unwittingly creating conditions that are exactly what the extremists would like,'' Peiris added.

Echoing a lament heard from US officials battling Islamic extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan, Peiris said the Tamil Tiger rebels are ''not constrained by any norms or principles, but a government has to act in conformity with the rule of law.'' The minister is in Washington through early next week and is seeking US help in overhauling Sri Lanka's justice system, updating security systems and practices, developing roads and agriculture to boost incomes in war-torn areas, he said.

Reuters

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