Ceylon Today Editorial

RELEVANCE OF JAISHANKAR’S VISIT

23 February 2017

Indian Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar is considered one of the very best diplomats on the global stage. No stranger to Sri Lanka, he was First Secretary at the Indian High Commission in Colombo in 1989 and 1990, during which time he was also the Political Advisor to the IPKF Commander fighting LTTE terrorists in the North and East of Sri Lanka. From there he went on to the zenith of the diplomatic world, successively posted as India's envoy to the US, China, Moscow, Czech Republic and so on.

Considered one of South Asia's best political and security brains and an intellectual to boot, Jaishankar is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, a think tank that's a repository of everything worth knowing in global geo-security and naturally all that's needed to be known about global geo-political ebbs and tides.

Now Premier Narendra Modi's key global trouble shooter, this is the man who dropped a bombshell at TNA leader R. Sampanthan's feet telling him last Monday that "India is no longer fixated, as the TNA is, about the 13th Amendment's linchpin namely the North-East Merger. It's not on Delhi's table anymore!" It would have taken the wind out of the latter's sails even as he plaintively told Jaishankar that the merger is always on as long as 13 A is on. Things, said Jaishankar, have changed since 1987.

Photographers clicked away madly to capture the interrogative manner in which Jaishankar's keen eyes bored into Sampanthan as he delivered Delhi's coup-de-grace.

That's an enormous change of stance and even perhaps a warning to Northern Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran who's been globe-trotting on a mission to promote just that very thing, to wit, a North-East merger that's the focus of his Tamil Peoples' Council.

Jaishankar's statement was equally strongly directed at leader of the Eelam Peoples' Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) Suresh Premachandran who appealed to Jaishankar to ensure that Delhi honours the pledge to maintain a merged North-East Province, which, according to the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord is not even negotiable via a referendum. By his statement Jaishankar underscored the fact that Delhi acknowledges the Sri Lankan Supreme Court's verdict in 2006 that the NE merger was unconstitutional.
All of this leaves the TNA and the Tamil diaspora in a pickle in the context of their attempts to drum up global support for another strong resolution against Sri Lanka on war crimes allegations at the UNHRC in a fortnight's time.

What's noteworthy is that just hours after Jaishankar's departure, four top Representatives of the United States Congress walked into the Presidential Secretariat in Colombo for very amiable talks with President Sirsena, very shortly after the President had briefed Jaishankar on progress the Government of Sri Lanka has made in reconciliation efforts and giving effect to changes in legislative affairs to give teeth to institutions tasked to push through reconciliation and reconstruction.

Two of US President Donald Trump's men namely Congressman Peter Roskam and Congressman Adrian Smith met the President on Tuesday along with Democratic Party Congressmen David Price and Gerald E. Connolly.

Roskam, like Jaishankar did hours earlier, conveyed the US House of Representatives' "admiration for the transformative process that the President has initiated," since he took office.

He also added that the USA will stand by Sri Lanka in economic development. That followed encouraging talks Jaishankar had with Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe to wrap up more Indian investments in Sri Lanka, and greater bilateral trade via the Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement now set to be entered into within the next two months.

When the largest democracy in the world, India, and the world's number one economic and military power, the USA send top men to Colombo for this kind of close consultation with the President and Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, with statements of admiration to boot, one can be forgiven tor jumping the gun and assuming that these two powers can and will help the Sri Lankan Government out at the UNHRC session by exerting suasion on England, Germany and any other nations, that's been urged by the terrorist supporters in the diaspora in Europe to slam a harsh new resolution against Sri Lanka.

That Jaishankar told Premachandran in effect to drop the merger issue and instead exploit new avenues being opened recently with the change of government in Colombo to secure the rights of the Tamils is indicative of the fact that India too will not be backing any move triggered by the TNA's handlers in the Tamil diaspora to table a new resolution against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC next month.

Jaishankar, however, softened the blow saying Delhi would have nothing against the Tamils if they kept the merger issue alive and on the table for talks with the Sri Lankan Government.

Even the JO can breathe easy next month....perhaps!!