Donors cannot super impose solution - Balasingham

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 November 2004, 10:45 GMT]
''The donor conferences held in Oslo on 25 November 2002 and in Tokyo on 10 June 2003 and the resolutions adopted at these meetings cannot bind our liberation organisation to a particular framework of a final political settlement,'' said Mr Anton Balasingham, the political advisor and chief negotiator of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in a statement to TamilNet Wednesday.

Commenting on the statement issued by Professor GL Peiris on behalf of the United National Party (UNP) clarifying documents released after donor meetings at Oslo and Tokyo, Mr Balasingham emphasised that donor governments could only support the peace process and encourage the protagonists to seek a negotiated political settlement but should not stipulate parameters for a political solution.

The Tamil Tiger theoretician pointed out that the LTTE boycotted the Tokyo Donor Conference, and the Declaration enunciated at the meeting had no binding obligations on the organisation. "The Sri Lanka government, with the active collusion of its international tactical allies, the donor governments, have formulated several resolutions in the form of a Declaration to super-impose its own set of ideas and propositions on the LTTE. We have already rejected the Tokyo Declaration as an unwarranted intervention by extra-territorial forces in the peace process. In an official statement issued on 23 June 2003, the LTTE leadership severely censured the government of Ranil Wickremesinghe for seeking refuge in the so-called 'international safety net' to resolve the political and economic crisis faced by the country, thereby shifting the peace process from third party facilitation to the realm of international arbitration," Mr Balasingham said.

The LTTE political advisor complimented Professor Peiris for clarifying that there was no 'Oslo Declaration' in relation to the decision to explore federal systems of government. "As Professor Peiris pointed out, it was a communiqué issued by the Royal Norwegian Government at the end of the third session of peace talks. The communiqué stated that both parties agreed to explore the feasibility of finding a political solution based on federal systems of governance founded on the principle of internal self-determination. The Declaration issued after the Oslo Donor Conference on 25 November 2002 only expressed strong support for the peace process and urged both parties to make further 'expeditious and systematic efforts, without recourse to violence to resolve the hardcore issues.'

"The position advanced by the UNP leaders that a framework for a political solution had emerged based on these three documents stated above, is untenable and unacceptable. A solution to the ethnic conflict cannot be pre-determined by the resolutions or declarations of donor conferences, but has to be negotiated by the parties in conflict, without the constraints of external forces," Mr Balasingham observed.

Related Articles:
21.06.03   Negotiating Tamil sovereignty
11.06.03   LTTE insists on draft framework for interim administration t..