Humanitarian issues stressed in Swiss Ambassador meeting

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 January 2003, 01:23 GMT]
In a meeting with a Swiss delegation headed by the ambassador for Switzerland in Sri Lanka, Hon. Bernardino Regazzoni today, S.P.Thamilchelvan, the political leader of the LTTE, has stressed that the immediate focus of the peace process should be on the humanitarian needs of the people of the North-East, according to the ambassador.

The meeting between the LTTE and the Swiss delegation took place at the LTTE's political headquarters in Kilnochchi today at 10:30 am. The Swiss Minister for Human Resources and an official from the embassy accompanied the ambassador.

The head of the LTTE's peace secretariat, Mr. Pulithevan, accompanied Mr. Thamilchelvan to the meeting. Mr. Thamilchelvan told the Swiss delegation that in the one-year period since the signing of the ceasefire agreement, normal life has not been restored to a large number of people. People would lose confidence in the peace process if immediate attention is not paid to the basic humanitarian needs of the people and restoring normal life in the North-East, Thamilchelvan told the delegation.

Matters such as the resettlement of people outside the High Security Zones (HSZ), the activities of the Subcommittee on Immeidate Humanitarian Rehabilitation Needs (SIHRN) and the possibility of increasing the number of people in the committee, the activities of the LTTE's peace secretariat and the progress in de-mining, figured in the meeting, sources said.