Agencies/Colombo
A senior Indian politician said yesterday that what took place in Sri Lanka was not an ethnic struggle but a linguistic struggle.
Speaking on the final day of the fourth Defence Seminar organised by the Sri Lanka Army, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanium Swamy also said the Indian government has made it clear that it was committed to improving ties with Sri Lanka., according to a report in the Daily Mirror.
Swamy is widely regarded as an advocate for close ties with the Sri Lankan government and has been a frequent visitor to the island nation.
“Sadly because the Tamil Nadu political parties were in the coalition led by the Congress, the support that India could have extended to Sri Lanka was lost. The Sri Lankan government had to go for peace talks because of international pressure,” Swamy said.
“We have given several proposals on our foreign policy to the Indian government, the first is that our foreign policy should be based on national interests and not on narrow local interests, a relationship that is best served with all our neighbours,” he said.
Swamy said the second proposal was that while India respected the UN Charter, the investigation on war crimes against Sri Lanka was unbalanced and intrusive and this was not acceptable to India.
Speaking about anti-Sri Lankan politicians in India, he said those who proposed strict action against Sri Lanka have been eliminated in the Indian elections.
Swamy said the entire shrimp and fish harvest in the Southern Indian waters has been exploited by the Indian fishermen; therefore the owners of the fishing boats who are either politicians or businessmen encourage the Indians to go into the Lankan waters and exploit the rich harvest, especially of shrimp.
He said the new Indian government wants to work closely with its Saarc neighbours and its partners in South East Asia and with China too.
Meanwhile, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi should visit Sri Lanka because Lankans are eager to host him.
“People want him to come here. If the Japanese prime minister and the Chinese president can come here, why can’t the Indian prime minister come, people ask,” Rajapaksa told the Foreign Correspondents’ Association on Tuesday.
“I had invited him when I met him last. And I will be meeting him at the next Saarc summit in November. Modi is keen on strengthening ties with Saarc countries,” the president said.
Asked if he was troubled by Tamil Nadu leaders’ opposition to any dealings with the Lankan government, he said: “It’s all politics. I don’t take it seriously.”
On the Tamil National Alliance, the president said that it is behaving as a “proxy of the LTTE” in clamouring for an international investigation. It is also not utilising the powers under the 13th amendment to improve conditions in the Northern Province because it wants to get more powers through international interventions.
He categorically rejected demands for grant of police powers to the provinces saying that there is still a threat of the revival of the LTTE.
“We have seen four or five attempts to revive the LTTE. National security cannot be compromised,” he said.
