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The forces hindering peace

By an interesting co-incidence, while President Kumaratunga has drawn the attention of the advocates of war to the dangers of war mongering, the LTTE has called on the people of the Jaffna peninsula to defy and refuse to cooperate with the Lankan State. Two contrasting and revealing perspectives which define for us who is for peace and who is for the continued bleeding of Sri Lanka.

It is very timely and appropriate that the President underscores once again the futility of continuing the war. Addressing a group of physicians, teachers, farmers, artistes and members of the fishing community - a representative gathering, we may say of the people proper - the President was quoted saying that the losses suffered by the country as a result of the recent LTTE attack on the Bandaranaike International Airport and the Katunayake airbase, when assessed in monetary terms, equal the total spending by the state over the past seven years on education in this country. So grave are the losses sustained by us as a result of the mindless LTTE attack. The destruction caused to the aircraft and the tourist section alone amounted to Rs. 95 billion.

This is a frank assessment of the continuing overwhelming costs of the war and one could only agree with the President that the conflict cannot be resolved by military means. For, the attack at Katunayake is the LTTE's maniacal response to the concrete conditions faced by them. Besides, war has become a major profit-earner for some and the armaments industry. Hence the alluring attraction which war has for some seemingly patriotic organisations.

However, the harsh reality is that the ordinary people are paying very dearly in terms of their general well being, for every rupee spent on the war. While the poor wither and die amid the conditions of war, profiteers amass fortunes from the same process. Thus are the people obliged to support a negotiated political settlement to the conflict, in their own interest.

All this seems to be lost on the LTTE which is continuing on its confrontational course. By urging the Northern people to defy the State, the LTTE is clearly underlining its militaristic and fascistic character. By opposing stubbornly by even the Government's welfare measures in the North the LTTE is establishing its anti-people character and its insensitivity to the State's peace effort.

The world should be made to see through these developments the forces which are hindering the peace process here. Besides the Southern war mongers and their sympathisers it is clearly the LTTE which is inimical to peace and reconciliation. If progress is to be made in the peace effort, the LTTE should be made to see the error of its ways. It is the responsibility of the State information machinery to constantly filter such information into the conscience of the world.

• Editorial of  The Observer - Economic survival 16.8.2001 -

• Voice of the Sinhala and Tamil Media
  Editorials from Sinhala and Tamil Newspapers
  of 16-8-2001

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