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NORWAY’S FOREIGN MINISTER JAN PETERSEN WARNS PRESIDENT KUMARATUNGA NOT TO INTERFERE IN SRI LANKA’S PEACE PROCESS
Foreign Minister Jan Petersen
By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles
November 01, 10.45 PM:Norway’s Foreign Minister Jan Petersen has indicated his great resistance to the interference of Sri Lanka’s elected executive President Chandrika Kumaratunga in the Norway managed peace process and warned her that kind of interference in her own country might have serious consequences in the country’s peace move and Norway’s role in it.
Petersen was responding to President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s complaint about the Head of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission being partial to the country’s separatist rebel group and behaving in a manner detrimental to the island nation’s security interests. It was alleged that the SLMM leaked information to the LTTE whose arms ship was attempting to smuggle weapons to the country and pursued by the Sri Lanka Navy. Using the alleged SLMM information the arms ship disappeared disabling the Navy to catch them.
While President Chandrika Kumaratunga demanded that the head of the SLMM, the retired Norwegian Major General Tryggve Tellefsen should be removed as the head of the mission , the main organ of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) , The Tamil Guardian in its latest issue , called the demand as a “tirade against the respected former Norwegian Commander.”
It was President Chandrika Kumaratunga, believed to be under diplomatic pressure of Western powers, who invited Norway, a country that had given sanctuary to LTTE rebels, to be peace brokers of Sri Lanka. At that time many Sri Lankan nationalists protested against the move.
Taking the story from the Norwegian daily Aftenposten, the English language Norway Post said, “According to Aftenposten, Foreign Minister Petersen warns the Sri Lankan President in more diplomatic terms that her continuous interference in the peace process could have consequences both for the peace process and for Norway's role in the process.”
Joining the Norwegian Foreign Minister both Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and the government’s chief negotiator G.L. Peiris have criticized President Chandrika Kumaratunga for her move.
The Norway Post further said, “Observers point out that President Kumaratunga has for a long time opposed her own government's handling of the peace process, which was initiated with Norwegian assistance in order to end the 30-year-long conflict.”
Already President Kumaratunga as the Commander in Chief of the Sri Lankan armed forces has order all commanders of the security forces not to deal with the head of the SLMM who is accused of siding with the LTTE rebel forces.
If Tryggve Tellefsen were to continue as the head of the mission it would lead to a crisis situation as far as the work of the SLMM is concerned.
Sri Lanka’s second largest opposition party the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna has been demanding that the whole Norwegian peace mission should be banished immediately. Ridiculing the President’s move to remove only the head of the mission the group’s parliamentary leader, Wimal Weerawansa said the aim of the SLMM was not to install peace in Sri Lanka but to assist the LTTE for the division of the country.
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