Govt. to present political proposals soon

Nadira GUNATILLEKE

The Government led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa is fully capable of presenting a set of political proposals that satisfy and receive the consent of all. The Government will present this set of political proposals shortly, Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said.

Addressing the media at his office in Colombo yesterday, Minister Bogollagama said the main objective of the Government is achieving sustainable stability and peace.

The APRC is now in its final stage of drafting proposals. The Government is not focusing on banning the LTTE at the moment and the doors are always open for talks, he said.

Explaining the background and related issues to the abrogation of the CFA, Minister Bogollagama said the abrogation of the CFA does not mean that the facilitation extended by the Norwegian Government to the Sri Lankan Government also ends with it.

The Government immensely values the contribution of the facilitators, Co-chairs and the international community towards negotiations, the Minister said.

The diplomatic community understood the facts and agreed with the Government’s decision to abrogate the CFA, he said.

The Government decided to abrogate the CFA after carefully considering the ground realities, all unfolding events and acting honestly in a realistic way.

The SLMM gave up monitoring the CFA violations in April, 2007 because the number of violations had increased.

There was no original document of the CFA but all bilateral agreements should be duplicated according to the procedure, the Minister said.

Under the CFA, Sri Lanka was not a sovereign State and the present Government made Sri Lanka a sovereign State, Bogollagama said.

The Sri Lankan Government does not want to undermine its sovereign status, he said.

There is no need of another CFA because violence must be ceased and there is no room for any type of violence.

What is needed today is a pragmatic agenda, the Minister added.

Answering a question by a journalist, Bogollagama said if the Government wanted to satisfy the JVP it would have abrogated the CFA in 2005 and not in 2008.

A piece of paper does not mean anything to anyone. What matters is action, the Minister said.

Even during the CFA the then Government received only around US$ 283 million in foreign funds but in the middle of a conflict, the present Government received US $ 600 million which clearly shows that the business community and investors did not care about the CFA, he added.

Bogollagama said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Sri Lanka in 2008.