Acceptable solution to the national question duty of India

16 January 2012 07:30 pm

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) stressed to India’s External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna yesterday that India is duty bound to prevail upon the government of Sri Lanka to evolve an acceptable solution to the national question, party’s media spokesman Suresh Premachandran said yesterday.

Soon after his arrival in the country, Mr. Krishna, accompanied by the top officials of the High Commission, met with a TNA delegation led by its leader R. Sampanthan.

Mr. Premachandran who also participated in the meeting said that India asked both the government of Sri Lankan and the TNA to engage with each other in the evolution of a political solution.

“As a result, we told the visiting Minister that it is the duty of India to ask Sri Lanka to speed up action in this regard,” he said.
 
He said that Mr. Krishna was apprised by the TNA delegation that the government had delayed the process of working out a reasonable set of political proposals.
 
“The government assured India earlier that powers would be devolved     beyond the 13th Amendment.  Today, they are not even ready to implement the 13th Amendment properly. They have reservations about the devolution of land and police powers to the provinces,” he said.
 
He said, “We started a political dialogue with the government a year ago. So far, nothing concrete has happened. We informed Mr. Krishna about these matters. Also, we briefed him that the situation in the north has not improved yet. There is a heavy military presence there. There are high security zones making it unable for people to resettle.”
 
Mr. Krishna arrived in Sri Lanka last evening on a four day visit. He is expected to hold talks with his Sri Lankan counterpart Prof. G.L. Peiris and the Leader of the Opposition, Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Krishna will also visit Kilinochchi and Jaffna to inspect projects that are being carried out with Indian assistance and will hand over the first lot of housing units at Ariyali in Jaffna.
 
He will also visit Galle in southern Sri Lanka where he is expected to inaugurate a segment of the Southern Railway Project implemented under a Line of Credit extended by the Government of India. (Kelum Bandara)