'Outsiders including India must keep off SL conflict'

Colombo, June 26: Pakistan High Commissioner to Sri Lanka has said ''outsiders'' including India should not meddle with the island nation's conflict as it was an internal matter, local media reports here said.

''No matter whether it is Pakistan, India or Norway, Sri Lanka should be allowed to solve its own problems,'' Pakistan High Commissioner Shahzad A Chaudhry has been quoted as saying while addressing a group of journalists in Colombo yesterday.

''No outsider could solve internal matters of Sri Lanka ,'' the Pakistani envoy has said at a workshop on ''Media Ethics'' at the Sri Lanka Press Institute in Colombo.

His remarks came barely a month after India 's National Security Advisor M K Narayanan said in Chennai that Sri Lanka should not buy weapons from Pakistan and China as India, being the regional power, was prepared to supply defensive weapons.

Commenting on the plight of Sri Lanka 's international relations, Mr Chaudhry said the island nation had not been given its rightful place in the world today.

''Sri Lanka should fight for its rightful place in the world by resolving the ongoing conflict,'' the Pakistan High Commission has reportedly said.

A couple of weeks ago, Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in an interview with an international television channel expressed a desire that India should play ''an active role'' in resolving the bloody ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's donor Co-Chairs are meeting in Oslo today ''to assess the current situation'' in the island national as truce related violence continues to escalate, leaving over 4000 people killed and several thousands displaced since December last year.

The US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, Japanese special peace envoy Yasushi Akashi, Director-General of the EU Presidency Andreas Michaelis and Acting Deputy Director-General of the European Commission James Morran are attending this top-level meeting.

''The purpose of the meeting is to share information and views.

The Co-Chairs will explore ways and means in which the group, as a whole or as individual countries, can continue helping the parties to cease violence and return to the negotiating table,'' Mr Solheim has said.

Playing down expectations of the meeting, the Norwegian embassy here said in a statement that Oslo did not ''intend to make any public statements after the Co-Chairs meeting'' as usual.

UNI

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