{"id":50119,"date":"2015-12-10T13:55:35","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T20:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=50119"},"modified":"2015-12-10T13:56:07","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T20:56:07","slug":"jt-opposition-sees-british-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/12\/10\/jt-opposition-sees-british-trap\/","title":{"rendered":"Jt. Opposition sees British trap"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>by Dasun Edirisinghe\u00a0Courtesy Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>The Joint Opposition led by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa\u2019s loyalists yesterday expressed their strong opposition to British involvement in military reforms in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n<p>Addressing the media at the N. M. Perera Centre in Colombo, former External Affairs Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris said that accepting British funds for military reforms in Sri Lanka was a serious threat to the country\u2019s national security.<\/p>\n<p>According to a recent statement of British Prime Minister David Cameron\u2019s office in UK, 6.6 mn pounds over a three-year period to support reconciliation, military reforms as well as displaced persons in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sri Lanka was a British colony then and got Independence by sacrificing lives, but it will become their colony again with this initiative,&#8221; Prof. Peiris said.<\/p>\n<p>He said that PM Cameron had also offered to appoint a non-resident defence attache and access to UK military training courses to help Sri Lankan military reforms.<\/p>\n<p>Prof. Peiris asked how a New Delhi-based UK military attache\u2019 could handle and monitor funds for the Sri Lankan Army directly. Instead, he said the Sri Lankan government should fund the army without falling into a British trap.<\/p>\n<p>The present government had planned to release 269 hardcore LTTE cadres and delist eight non governmental organisations which were accused of LTTE links, he said, adding that the same organisations were now campaigning around the world displaying LTTE flags as well as on social media networks for fund raising.<\/p>\n<p>Prof. Peiris said the present government was working according to promises it had made to the international community and the TNA before the Jan. 08 presidential election.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We will continue our protests with legal and political action against this anti-constitutional activities of the government,&#8221; Prof. Peiris said.<\/p>\n<p>Former Minister and Ratnapura District MP Vasudeva Nanayakkara and Former Minister Prof. Tissa Vitarana also addressed the media.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dasun Edirisinghe\u00a0Courtesy Island The Joint Opposition led by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa\u2019s loyalists yesterday expressed their strong opposition to British involvement in military reforms in Sri Lanka. Addressing the media at the N. M. Perera Centre in Colombo, former External Affairs Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris said that accepting British funds for military reforms [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}