Clinton's visit - a fillip

THE return of former US President Bill Clinton to Sri Lanka, this time in the capacity of UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, we hope, would have the effect of impressing on all concerned, the need to forge ahead vibrantly with our country rebuilding effort. According to a UN source, a principal aim of Clinton is to "keep everyone focused on results, transparency and accountability". The

public would recall that Clinton along with another former US President, George Bush (Snr.), visited this country in February as part of a tour aimed at galvanizing world wide support for the rebuilding of tsunami-devastated regions of Asia and for establishing a steady help-line for states which suffered in the catastrophe, at the request of US President George Bush.

Besides, hopefully, speeding-up our country rebuilding process, Clinton's current visit is certain to further bolster US-Lanka relations and inject these ties with a substantial degree of warmth and cordiality. However, Clinton's central area of concern would be Lanka's rebuilding effort and the progress made by us in our endeavour to fully recover from the tsunami tragedy. We hope this visit by the UN Special Envoy would be a fillip to an accelerated country rebuilding drive, with special emphasis on "results, transparency and accountability".

These are, indeed, three very crucial factors in putting Sri Lanka back on its feet and we hope they would be receiving the attention of all concerned, particularly the Lankan State. As mentioned by us, concrete progress needs to be achieved in Lanka's rebuilding process and we hope a substantial degree of efficiency has been registered in the effort in this direction on the part of all concerned, including our State sector personnel.

Coupled with efficiency, there absolutely needs to be transparency and accountability on the part of all those involved in this momentous enterprise. These factors are particularly important at a time when our donor community's aid pledges have exceeded $ 3 billion. If the world community is to continue to stand by our side the standards of concrete progress, transparency and accountability need to be scrupulously met.

The Lankan State, however, could take heart from the fact that more and more political parties are now supportive of the joint mechanism proposal. This mechanism needs to be in place if the rebuilding of the North-East is to be speeded-up and Clinton would be seeing for himself the effort currently underway to restore a degree of normalcy to the East. We hope he would be encouraged by what he sees in this district because it suffered considerably at the hands of the tsunami.

We have no alternative but to put in an all out effort to bring normalcy to our tsunami-ravaged regions. We hope this recovery drive would be made the launching pad for a renewed peace effort too.