OPTION OF MILITARY INTERVENTION IN LANKA OPEN: DEPUTY-ARMY CHIEF OF INDIA

THE ISLAND Colombo daily 18 Nov 2003

Janata Party President Dr. Subramanian Swamy asked that India set pre-conditions before intervening militarily in Sri Lanka.

Welcoming views expressed by Deputy Army Chief Lt-General Shatanu Choudhary made in Chennai yesterday that all options were open in the Sri Lankan crisis  including military intervention – Dr Swami said that a permanent base in Colombo will ensure that the Sinhala leadership “does not stab India as President Premadasa did in 1988-90”. He said President Chandrika must announce an India-type quasi-federal Constitution to replace the existing unitary one.

A key figure involved in stabbing India’s Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in the back was brought back from London in year 2002 by PM Ranil Wickremasinghe to serve as his advisor.

This is the aging R Paskaralingam, a civil ser-viant who arose in the shadow of politician R Pre-madasa. As functional intimate he aided and abetted President Premadasa in consolidating the LTTE, which fired on the IPKF. Local newspapers reported how weapons and vehicles were handed over to the LTTE to elevate it so that it could absorb cadre from some eight other militant groups and not scorch it-self to the ground with them and thus physically extinguish separatism from Premadasa’s complaints as rationale to skim off IMF loans.

In paradox, President Premadasa was blown sky-high alongside his garage booby-trapped vehicle at the time of a pre- election fight for power of three factions of his own party, the UNP. In large part due to the power struggle, Opposition parties grouped together as the Popular Alliance won the election with Chandrika Kumaratunga as President in 1994.

Then, R Paskaralingam survived charges of treachery against the state by fleeing to settle in London. His fears of exposure are not slight because he stood at Premadasa’s right hand looking at the sea when the houses of fellow Jaffna Tamils were burnt by organised plan in 1983.

It is too much to expect Paskaralingam and UNP top brass to accept disclosure of their negligence or criminal participation in the burnings of 25th July 1983 which led to two decades of civil war. Therefore in holding down the lid on crimes against the country population, Paskaralingam is a fellow of Ranil Wickremasinghe, a junior minister of Black July 1983.

This explains Paskaralingam’s settling in a five-star hotel in Colombo to assist Wickremasinghe as formal advisor no sooner the latter became PM in year 2002.

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So Dr Subramanium Swamy’s fears as regards sabotage of India’s efforts are quite real. These fears received acknowlegement in President Kumaratunga’s full take over of command of Sri Lanka’s services and weaponry in early November 2003 so as to reduce the risk of the use of government ordnance on the Indian army by wayward officers.

Yet, risks are not at end. PM Ranil Wickremasinghe and R Paskaralingam, connect with the command network that leads to the LTTE hierarchy. If this network is not paralysed, grasped or held by India, it will lever up the level of damage that Dr Subramanium Swamy anticipates.

The network came into being through the simplest of facts. Paskaralingam’s sister’s marriage to a LTTE leader provided a link for a decision on the LTTE as supremo for Jaffna. Treasury vouchers for Rs 75 million show that Treasury head Paskaralingam handed over money to Anton Balasingam and Lawrence Thilagar to bolster the LTTE separatists fighting against the state. Despite the act of treachery, today, more than a decade later, any news reporter will find Paskaralingam’s name has once again become an automatic door opener at the Treasury in Colombo.

Paskaralingam – advisor to the PM and informal LTTE kingmaker, supported by the largesse of the Maharaja Organisation of ‘Killy’ Rajamahendran, Maharajah TV broadcast staff, the ‘Sunday Leader’ newspaper and the ultimate handler of Norwegian peace squib Eric Solheim – represents a mahout of the “Sinhala leadership”. A thorough investigation of the hitherto hidden mahout’s remote control of Sri Lanka’s elephant rampage will contribute to scaling down the enforced cost of India’s protection of her southern border.

Fundamentally what rolls over the border are the contaminating effects of extortion rackets and multi-tier white collar crime, incepted by IMF mesmerising for an ‘Open Economy’ from 1977 (the USSR’s population suc***bed to the same lure and the country was destabilised in just 5 years between 1983-88 whereas China rejected Free Trade hype just as India did at the Cancún WTO talks.)

Costs to India’s defence that await scaling down today incorporate the lives of officers and men.