New Delhi: India on Saturday said the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil rebels must find a political solution to their dispute and “military action will not do”.
Sri Lanka's military shot down two aeroplanes of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) flying a defiant air raid on Colombo on Friday. The LTTE air raid is of “concern”, said External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukhjerjee in Berhampore in West Bengal on Saturday.
"An LTTE plane has been shot down. This is of concern. Political solution has to be found to the LTTE issue and military action will not do."
"A political solution is the only way out, he said. "The two sides should sit across the table for a negotiated settlement of the issue. And, for that a congenial and peaceful atmosphere has to be created. Till that is not forthcoming, attacks and counter-attacks will continue to hit the country.”
"We are concerned. We are concerned for the huge Sri Lankan Tamil population who have been caught in the crossfire. They are being killed and their normal life is seriously affected," said Mukhjerjee.
India would appeal to Colombo to ensure that the rights of the minority Tamils were protected. It believed that the treaty signed in 1987 between the Sri Lankan government and Rajiv Gandhi, who was India’s Prime Minister then, could help in bringing peace to the island nation.
"The decisions arrived there should be implemented. The decision for decentralisation of power and more powers to the provincial council should be followed," the minister said.
Mukherjee said the Tamils and other ethnic minorities in Sri Lanka must have an arrangement where there legitimate aspirations should be fulfilled within the framework of the Sri Lankan Constitution without affecting the territorial unity and sovereignty of Sri Lanka.
The LTTE air raid on Colombo came amid an all-out army offensive that forced the rebels out of nearly all of their strongholds in the north and left them on the brink of defeat in their quarter-century separatist war.
The Sri Lankan military says the LTTE is now “desperate” but the attack also showed the rebels were not ready to surrender, despite a military offensive that swept them from their de facto capital of Kilinochchi last month and then pushed them into a shrinking sliver of territory along the northeast coast.
The rebels have been fighting since 1983 for an independent state for minority Tamils after decades of alleged marginalisation by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
(With inputs from PTI, AP, and Reuters. )
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