Lanka sets timeline for resettling Tamil refugees
On the sidelines of ASEAN conference currently being held in Thailand, Sri Lankan foreign minister has said that his government has set a six-month timeline for rehabilitation of displaced Tamil refugees. He assured that the process of devolution of power to the ethnic minority would also begin soon.
Phuket: For the first time, Sri Lanka has set a six-month timeline for rehabilitating Tamils displaced by the recently ended conflict between its armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Asked when the time limit for resettling the internally displaced persons began, Minister for Foreign Affairs Rohitha Bogollagama said, “a month has gone” and wanted the global community to appreciate that the war had ended less than two months back.
“It has been eight weeks [since the war ended],” he said after emerging from a meeting with External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna, on the sidelines of a conference organised by the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Bogollagama said the devolution of power to Tamils of Sri Lankan origin was part of the Constitution, and its implementation was part of the healing process, now that the more than two-decade-old conflict had ended.
The government was sharing the progress made in the rehabilitation process and its ideas about the pace of the devolution of power with the entire polity of Sri Lanka, through the All Parties Representative Committee, which could be reshaped to make it even more broad-based.
“We share a warm and unique relationship and we speak in one voice,” said Bogollagama, and the sentiment was reciprocated by Krishna.
His observations come days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told Parliament that India’s relationship with Sri Lanka hinged on its treatment of its Tamils.
