Breaking News

[Mathivathanan]

Date : 2004-07-29
<span style='font-size:25pt;line-height:100%'>People of Sri Lanka must bring peace to their country - Vidar Helgesen</span>

Colombo 29 July : Vidar Helgesen Deputy Foreign Minister of Norway, a worried looking man explained "Norway cannot bring peace to Sri Lanka. It is the people of Sri Lanka who must bring peace to their country."

He pointed out, "People must realize that nothing comes for free, peace won't just happen. There must be effort put into the peace process."

Norwegian Foreign Minister Vidar Helgesen who came to Colombo last Sunday held a press conference yesterday to report the present critical situation country faces regarding the stalled peace process and its dangerous trends slowly but steadily moving towards another campaign and it has to be arrested.

Norwegian facilitator and the international community which tries to facilitate and broker a sustainable peace in the country, it seems have come to end of the tunnel but find in the end gloomy and dark, and the ray of optimism elusive.

It was a testy situation that prevails regarding the peace talks to take off, explained Norway's Deputy Minister.

<span style='color:red'>\"I have no doubts about the President's commitment, but she cannot operate in a vacuum,\" said Helgesen.

Helgesen said that Chandrika Kumaratunga was flexible in agreeing to the LTTE condition of discussing the Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA) exclusively but the JVP , the junior partner in her government has continuously insisted that the core issue for a final settlement be taken up simultaneously.

A general feeling was that already Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam through their conditions for talks has spurn the momentum for talks and the latest killings they were involved has clearly put the Talks off the balance.

This was clearly evidence from what Helgesen said in the Press conference. He said the commencement of negotiations has to be held only at the negotiating table where concrete and substantive progress could be made. Till then what is said will be of little practical value.

Helgesen cautioned that the most important thing was to get back to the negotiating table and that "the gap was bridgeable," however as a parting shot warned the leaders to be "ready to make difficult choices and political sacrifices if their aim was peace."

In today's press conference Vidar Helgesen said "The cease-fire agreement is not peace." He told a press conference: "It has only frozen the war and that is now starting to melt at the edges."

Helgesen said that unless the killings stopped and the ground situation improved, mutual trust would continue to evade the two sides.

He further went on to say that it was an absence of mutual trust that was holding up any substantive progress in the peace process.

Helgesen said that the patience of the international community was being 'tested" and a frustrated international community could turn its attention elsewhere, as there were other problems in the world which were also crying for the international community's attention.

The press conference Vidae Helgessen held prior to his departure to Norway after another unsuccessful round of shuttle diplomacy, shows desperate signs of disappointment.

He however, said that Norway was not at all contemplating giving up. Oslo would take up the Sri Lankan situation with the international community and seek its views on how to carry the peace process forward.

Helgesen ruled out international military engagement here or taking up the issue at the United Nations security council as in the case of other countries currently engaging the attention of the international community.

- Asian Tribune - </span>
http://www.asiantribune.com/show_news.php?id=10589