Manmohan Singh's Sri Lanka Dilemma - NYTimes.com
Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters Tamil women in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, on Aug. 27, holding images of their family members, who reportedly went missing during national express the war between the Sri Lankan army and the separatist group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. On Nov. 15, the presidents and the prime ministers of an array of countries once ruled by the British Empire will assemble in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, for the annual meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
India s Tamils have age-old strong bonds with the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka, national express and in the past week a battery of Tamil politicians in India have demanded that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh boycott the summit meeting in Colombo to express India s concern over the treatment of Tamils in the island nation. national express
Some of the most powerful ministers in Mr. Singh s government are among those opposing national express Mr. Singh s visit to Colombo, including P. Chidambaram, India s influential finance minister; Jayanthi Natarajan, the federal minister for environment and forests; V. Narayanasamy, the junior minister attached to the prime minister s office; and G.K. Vasan, the junior minister for shipping and industry. All four federal ministers opposing the visit are from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, which maintains very close civilizational links with the Sri Lankan Tamils, who form a majority in Sri Lanka s northern and eastern provinces.
India s Ministry of External Affairs is pushing Mr. Singh to attend the meeting, saying that India must reassert its right to frame India s foreign policy, especially in the very important space around India s neighbourhood. Officials argue that if Mr. Singh does not go to Colombo, it would cause the Sri Lankan president, national express Mahinda Rajapaksa, to lose face and perhaps even push him closer into the arms of China and Pakistan, both traditional rivals of India.
Manpreet Romana/Agence France-Presse national express Getty Images Manmohan Singh, right, prime minister of India with Mahinda Rajapaksa, president of Sri Lanka, during the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony in New Delhi, on Oct. 14, 2010.
But in an age of competitive electoral politics, foreign national express policy is not immune to domestic political concerns. Tamil Nadu s main political parties, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, or D.M.K., and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam have made it clear that they are opposed to Mr. Singh s visit to Colombo because it would be seen to be supporting Mr. Rajapaksa s policies against his own Tamil citizens .
The Tamil Nadu parties have a strong case. Despite allowing elections to be held in Sri Lanka s Northern Provincial Council in September, in which the Tamil Nationalist Alliance swept the polls, Mr. Rajapaksa has refused to cede land and police powers to the provincial government. Moreover, national express the provincial governor remains a hand-picked man of Colombo, which means that he will be expected to do Mr. Rajapaksa s bidding rather than defer to the elected representatives of the Tamil Nationalist Alliance government.
However, Indian diplomats argue that the Bangladesh debacle in September 2011 should serve as a reminder to the Ministry of External Affairs to never let foreign policy be subservient to domestic politics. At that time, India caved into pressure by Mamata Banerjee, the West Bengal national express chief minister and Trinamool Congress leader, not to sign the Teesta waters agreement national express with Dhaka.
Indian diplomats point out that India bailed out Mr. Rajapaksa several times during the civil war against the Tamil rebels, not only because the rebels had killed a former Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, but also because it did not want Western powers like the United States to gain influence in the Indian Ocean. They point out that the United national express States and several Scandinavian countries wanted national express to help Mr. Prabhakaran to escape from Jaffna, but India helped national express Mr. Rajapaksa s government in not letting that happen.
One way to resolve Mr. Singh’s national express Colombo national express dilemma might be for him to also visit Jaffna, the capital of the Tamil-majority Northern Province and have talks with its recently elected Tamil chief minister, C.V. Wigneeshwaran. The second would be for him to hold Sri Lanka s president national express to his own promise to implement the Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Commission, in which the government has vowed to made amends to its Tamil minority.
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From the rise of a new private sector–and the billionaires that sustain and exploit it–to national express the beginning of a vast national identity national express database, articles in this series examine national express the messy and maddeni
Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters Tamil women in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, on Aug. 27, holding images of their family members, who reportedly went missing during national express the war between the Sri Lankan army and the separatist group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. On Nov. 15, the presidents and the prime ministers of an array of countries once ruled by the British Empire will assemble in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, for the annual meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
India s Tamils have age-old strong bonds with the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka, national express and in the past week a battery of Tamil politicians in India have demanded that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh boycott the summit meeting in Colombo to express India s concern over the treatment of Tamils in the island nation. national express
Some of the most powerful ministers in Mr. Singh s government are among those opposing national express Mr. Singh s visit to Colombo, including P. Chidambaram, India s influential finance minister; Jayanthi Natarajan, the federal minister for environment and forests; V. Narayanasamy, the junior minister attached to the prime minister s office; and G.K. Vasan, the junior minister for shipping and industry. All four federal ministers opposing the visit are from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, which maintains very close civilizational links with the Sri Lankan Tamils, who form a majority in Sri Lanka s northern and eastern provinces.
India s Ministry of External Affairs is pushing Mr. Singh to attend the meeting, saying that India must reassert its right to frame India s foreign policy, especially in the very important space around India s neighbourhood. Officials argue that if Mr. Singh does not go to Colombo, it would cause the Sri Lankan president, national express Mahinda Rajapaksa, to lose face and perhaps even push him closer into the arms of China and Pakistan, both traditional rivals of India.
Manpreet Romana/Agence France-Presse national express Getty Images Manmohan Singh, right, prime minister of India with Mahinda Rajapaksa, president of Sri Lanka, during the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony in New Delhi, on Oct. 14, 2010.
But in an age of competitive electoral politics, foreign national express policy is not immune to domestic political concerns. Tamil Nadu s main political parties, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, or D.M.K., and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam have made it clear that they are opposed to Mr. Singh s visit to Colombo because it would be seen to be supporting Mr. Rajapaksa s policies against his own Tamil citizens .
The Tamil Nadu parties have a strong case. Despite allowing elections to be held in Sri Lanka s Northern Provincial Council in September, in which the Tamil Nationalist Alliance swept the polls, Mr. Rajapaksa has refused to cede land and police powers to the provincial government. Moreover, national express the provincial governor remains a hand-picked man of Colombo, which means that he will be expected to do Mr. Rajapaksa s bidding rather than defer to the elected representatives of the Tamil Nationalist Alliance government.
However, Indian diplomats argue that the Bangladesh debacle in September 2011 should serve as a reminder to the Ministry of External Affairs to never let foreign policy be subservient to domestic politics. At that time, India caved into pressure by Mamata Banerjee, the West Bengal national express chief minister and Trinamool Congress leader, not to sign the Teesta waters agreement national express with Dhaka.
Indian diplomats point out that India bailed out Mr. Rajapaksa several times during the civil war against the Tamil rebels, not only because the rebels had killed a former Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, but also because it did not want Western powers like the United States to gain influence in the Indian Ocean. They point out that the United national express States and several Scandinavian countries wanted national express to help Mr. Prabhakaran to escape from Jaffna, but India helped national express Mr. Rajapaksa s government in not letting that happen.
One way to resolve Mr. Singh’s national express Colombo national express dilemma might be for him to also visit Jaffna, the capital of the Tamil-majority Northern Province and have talks with its recently elected Tamil chief minister, C.V. Wigneeshwaran. The second would be for him to hold Sri Lanka s president national express to his own promise to implement the Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Commission, in which the government has vowed to made amends to its Tamil minority.
From India Ink Bad History Mars Indian Movie On Rajiv Gandhi’s Assassination Allegations of War Crimes in Sri Lanka Shake Indian national express Government India’s ‘Rotten Diplomacy’ in Sri Lanka Breeds Loathing The New New Thing in U.S.-Indian Relations? India’s Weakened Government May Struggle For Reform national express
From the rise of a new private sector–and the billionaires that sustain and exploit it–to national express the beginning of a vast national identity national express database, articles in this series examine national express the messy and maddeni
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