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ERIC SOLHEIM COMES FROM KILINOCHCHI WITH EMPTY HANDS AND LTTE POINTS ISGA AND KARUNA ISSUE AS OBSTACLES TO PEACE TALKS

Norway’s Special Envoy Eric Solheim with LTTE delegation. The meeting took place in Paris in last year .Col. Karuna also in the puicture. (file photo)

By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles

July 01, 10.30 AM: The two-hour meeting between Norway’s Special Envoy Eric Solheim and Liberation Tiger’s of Tamil Eelam political head S. Paramu Thamilselvan in the Tiger stronghold of Kilinochchi ended producing no results in restoring the stalled peace talks of Sri Lanka.

The LTTE this time attached one more excuse, the allegation that their renegade leader Colonel Karuna Amman’s havoc caused to the Ceasefire with the help of the Sri Lanka Army in the Eastern Province as a reason of not starting the peace talks between them and the Government of Sri Lanka.

Thamilselvan said the only way of accepting international aid for them would be to immediately start, the Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA), which the Sri Lanka government and the US state Department both have described as a way of going to a separate state by the rebels.

Under those circumstances the government of Sri Lanka would not accept the Interim Self Governing Authority as a condition to start the stalled peace talks although President Chandrika Kumaratunga had agreed to discuss them. The non-establishment of the ISGA is the other reason pointed out by Thamilselvan for not re-starting the stalled peace talks.

Observers in Colombo said partly in jest, that the only purpose served by Eric Solheim’s Kilinochchi trip was that he became former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s messenger man and was able to deliver a letter from the former Prime Minister to Thamilselvan absolving Wickremesinghe from having any hand in the affair of transporting Karuna to Colombo safely from Batticaloa. In the letter Ranil Wickremesinghe reportedly put the whole blame on UNP Member of Parliament Ali Sahir Moulana who has now resigned over the issue from his parliamentary seat. Moulana still keeps his close relationship with Ranil Wickremesinghe and blames the LTTE Batticaloa leadership of requesting him to transport Karuna to Colombo, for good riddance and for the purpose of allowing him to travel abroad.

Thamilselvan addressing correspondents in Kilinochchi said the Karuna affair has developed into a dangerous proportions and the violation of the ceasefire agreement would result in an alarming situation. He said the Norway envoy, Eric Solheim has fully understood the situation.

He said the LTTE has already informed all donor nations that it would not accept any aid from donor nations without the Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA). He said the LTTE would only accept aid through the ISGA for the reconstruction of the war ravaged Eastern and Northern Provinces of the country.

Meanwhile Eric Solheim said the flow of aid would start only with the establishment of peace talks and he was unable to change this policy of the aid giving countries.

Colombo newspapers, the UNICEF and the Human Rights Watch meanwhile have reported the LTTE’s campaign to recruit members to its fighting machine and abductions of children in the Eastern Province to be trained as child soldiers, which many observers have seen as a preparation for a war.

( go2lanka.com)