Erik Solheim’s innocence
Posted on October 9th, 2012

Editorial Courtesy The Island

Erik Solheim has drawn heavy flak from the very people who once hailed him a hero over a remark that if Prabhakaran had agreed to an organised surrender towards the final phase of the war many lives could have been saved.

Solheim has sought to pull the wool over the eyes of the world community by craftily holding the dead LTTE leader responsible for what happened. Solheim cannot wash his hands of the disastrous outcome of the LTTE’s military campaign. He is one of the few people who had direct access to the Tiger chief and they went beyond the hail-fellow-well-met slaps on each other’s back. They became soul mates! There’s is the smell of blood about Solheim, too, and all the perfumes in Scandinavia will not sweeten his hands. The same goes for all others who provided Prabhakaran with funds, arms and ammunition etc; ran diplomatic errands for him and, above all, duped him into believing that he could carve out Eelam militarily. They cannot absolve themselves of the responsibility for the heinous crimes he committed in the name of liberation.
True, if Prabhakaran had not rejected, out of hand, the government’s call for surrender, the bloody climax of the conflagration could have been avoided and he would probably have been alive today. But, the fact remains that those who are now faulting him posthumously for miscalculations did precious little to prevent him from plunging the country back into war in 2006. Instead, they pandered to his whims and fancies and mislead him into believing that the LTTE was invincible. Solheim even had the chutzpah to tell President Mahinda Rajapaksa to his face that Prabhakaran was a brilliant military strategist and nobody was equal to the task of defeating the Tigers!

Solheim remained quite sanguine that the LTTE would achieve its goal sooner or later. Even after the army had fought its way into the LTTE’s heartland with the Tigers beating a hasty retreat, he kept on saying that the army, in Kilinochchi, would face a debacle like the crushing defeat of the Nazis at the hands of the Red Army in Stalingrad.
After launching Eelam War IV, Prabhakaran banked heavily on Solheim and the foreign powers such as the US, the EU, Norway and Japan, which banded together to prop up Sri Lanka’s crumbling peace process at that time, to intervene to prevent the army from proceeding beyond Kilinochchi in case he could not repulse the onslaught. While the war was raging in the East, it may be recalled, Prabhakaran summoned a group of TNA parliamentarians to Kilinochchi and told them that he would hold out until they brought international pressure to bear on the government to stop the war. But, they let him downƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…”ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…”very badly. And the rest is history.

Solheim and other Tiger supporters let Prabhakaran resume hostilities as they thought he would succeed in his endeavour. The government at that time was politically weak with a razor thin majority in Parliament and the country’s economy was in bad shape. Besides, surreptitious attempts were being made to bring down the government by defeating budgets and engineering crossovers in a bid to cause its military campaign to come crashing down. Prabhakaran’s friends expected the war effort to collapse either on the battlefront in the Vanni or on the banks of Beira (where the Treasury is located). Their plans went awry. And, today, some of them are trying to lay the blame for the LTTE’s debacle solely at Prabhakaran’s grave and get away with the crimes they aided and abetted him in committing. If they think they could fool the world, they are mistaken.

4 Responses to “Erik Solheim’s innocence”

  1. Dilrook Says:

    Enough proof is found in the conduct of SLMM led by Norwegians. They selectively recorded and blamed the government side of CFA violations.

  2. Susantha Wijesinghe Says:

    EERIK SOLHEIM WAS PRABHAKARANS ‘keep’. He did enough damage to Sri Lanka, and I see in the News that he is coming to help in reconciliation. Damning Hypocrite.

  3. Manjula Says:

    Solheim has proved that he is not “man” enough to admit that he helped a nasty terrorist to kill innocent people in the name of liberation.

    This is exactly what the west has done in Libya and now in Syriya. They don’t care how many people gets killed as long as they are not american, british, canadian or norwegian. They simply use cat’s paw to get their job done at the cost of innocent lives in the world.

    Solheim was and is a white colar war criminal and must be dragged to ICC. He is Norway’s “National Shame”.

  4. Fran Diaz Says:

    Lest we forget, this is what happened to Mr Solheim in Norway :

    ERIC SOLHEIM STRIPPED OF HIS POWER AND FIRED FROM CABINET IN NORWAY
    Posted on March 23rd, 2012 : Lankaweb
    By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles

    The Norway Broadcasting (NRK) reported the country’s UN special envoy to Sri Lankan peace process and the powerful leftist politician Eric Solheim has been stripped of his Ministerial titles-both of environmental issues and foreign aid and replaced by younger ones in the party in the country’s coalition government.

    In Sri Lanka his “peace process” never won the confidence of the majority Sinhalese people and had been openly accused of being partial to the LTTE leadership. The late Anton Balasingham ,a fellow leftist traveler like him had high praise for him and a close friend.

    A Norwegian publication said the replacement “ will give another victory to Vladimir Putin in the Russian Geo Politics in the High North including in Asia, to many, ”Frenemy” to the US.”

    The pro-LTTE Tamil Net commenting on Solheim said: “However, LTTE’s confidence in Solheim and Norway was seriously affected in 2003, when the movement started realizing that the so-called Oslo Declaration was a trap. The LTTE leadership was then forced to work in a new direction by formulating ISGA proposals.

    “Last year, the main criticism of Norway’s evaluation report on the failed peace process was about the way the process had been steered: not telling the world the truth by quitting the process when it was leading to a crisis and the way the development strategy was handled during the process.

    “Making his presentation at the release of the report, Mr Solheim came out with several remarks, revealing his as well as India’s role in the peace process.

    “Speaking at the event, Mr Solheim tried to paint a star-crossed picture, when he said that nobody expected the war to end like that.

    “But more and more evidences surfacing confirm that what happened was planned genocide – planned for years at some quarters.” The Tamil Net said.

    Solheim led Norway’s climate negotiations, promoted environmental causes and been in charge of Norway’s foreign aid and development programs. NRK reported that new SV leader Audun Lysbakken told Solheim he was being replaced while at work Wednesday. Solheim headed as scheduled for Buskerud County to participate in a debate on predator policies Wednesday night and wouldn’t talk about the pending government shake-up. “I have absolutely no comment,” he told NRK.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

 

 


Copyright © 2024 LankaWeb.com. All Rights Reserved. Powered by Wordpress