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US warship to visit Sri Lanka after eight years

	April 29, 2002

A US warship, on a patrolling mission in the Indian Ocean, will call at a Sri

Lankan port next week making it the first visit to the country by an American Navy vessel in eight years. The guided missile destroyer USS Hopper, part of the US government’s Operation Enduring Freedom, will berth at Colombo port April 30.

Although the vessel will make a 10-hour re-fuelling stop, the visit comes against the backdrop of increased US interest in Sri Lanka since a Norwegian bid to broker peace gathered speed.

Washington has said it strongly backs the truce concluded by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels in February. The US warship follows the visits made by US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca, US Marines General Timothy Ghormley and Seventh Fleet Commander James Metzger in the last two months.

Both Rocca and Ghormley made landmark visits to the former Tiger rebels’ stronghold of Jaffna, the first time visiting American officials have landed in the northern peninsula.

US Ambassador Ashley Wills said: “The visit of the USS Hopper is emblematic of the friendship between the people of the US and the people of Sri Lanka. I am especially pleased that we are seeing an American ship visit Colombo after such a long time.”



India caught between Sri Lankan tug of war

India’s hands-off policy towards Sri Lanka is being severely tested with the country’s President, Prime Minister and Tamil Tiger guerrillas wooing New Delhi over the ongoing peace process.

Since it badly burnt its hands after deploying troops in the island in 1987 under a bilateral pact to help end the ethnic bloodletting, New Delhi had been content to watch as Sri Lanka remained caught in a time-wrap of violence.

The Norway-brokered truce between Colombo and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is, however, dragging New Delhi unwittingly again into the centre-stage of the island’s politics.

Both President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who was in India recently on a weeklong visit, and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe are looking for New Delhi’s support to their differing stands on how to make peace with LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran.

While Wickremesinghe looks determined to enter into a peace deal with the Tigers at any cost, Kumaratunga, who escaped an assassination attempt by the rebels that left her blind in one eye, is sceptical about Prabhakaran’s intentions. She is particularly concerned about the government’s move to hand over the entire northeastern province in Sri Lanka to the LTTE under an interim administration for the Tamil-majority region.

Kumaratunga feels such a development would lead to large-scale violation of human rights in the area, given the LTTE’s track record.

New Delhi shares some of Kumaratunga’s concerns, particularly the move to hand over control of the north-eastern province to the LTTE, which is outlawed in India and whose leader is wanted for the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Kumaratunga also does not wholly agree with Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s reported eagerness to lift the ban on the LTTE, imposed in 1998. The Tigers have refused to talk further if the ban is not removed.

Though it has been following a hands-off policy towards Sri Lanka for over a decade, India fully backs the Norway-brokered peace move between Colombo and the LTTE. Both the government and the Tamil Tigers have said India’s support for the peace process is crucial for its success. While New Delhi is strongly opposed to an independent Tamil state called Eelam that the LTTE wants to set up in the northeast, it has advocated a peaceful resolution of the ethnic conflict within an undivided Sri Lanka that at the same time meets the aspirations of the minority Tamils.

Kumaratunga has said the proposed interim administration for the northeast should have representation for all Tamil groups and not be controlled solely by the LTTE.

Senior Indian officials say Kumaratunga’s concerns about possible rights violations in LTTE-controlled areas were valid. They note whenever the LTTE gained control of the northeastern province, they have carried on a campaign of vendetta against those who did not support them.

After Indian troops deployed in the island returned home in 1990, the LTTE took over the sprawling region and jailed hundreds of people in inhuman conditions as punishment for having sided with the Indian military.

Economic Reforms Minister Milinda Moragoda, who is also the minister in charge of the peace process, visited the Indian capital recently and briefed National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra about the Sri Lanka situation. The Sri Lankan Premier himself is expected to visit New Delhi in the first week of June to brief Prime Minister Vajpayee about the peace process, whose pace of progress has been described by Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgesen as “amazing.”