{"id":75680,"date":"2018-03-16T12:28:53","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T19:28:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=75680"},"modified":"2018-03-16T12:29:27","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T19:29:27","slug":"wikileaks-reveal-miliband-was-touting-for-tamil-votes-just-like-what-some-present-british-mps-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/03\/16\/wikileaks-reveal-miliband-was-touting-for-tamil-votes-just-like-what-some-present-british-mps-do\/","title":{"rendered":"WIKILEAKS REVEAL MILIBAND WAS TOUTING FOR TAMIL VOTES JUST LIKE WHAT SOME PRESENT BRITISH MPs DO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Julian Borger<\/a>, diplomatic editor The Guardian<\/em><\/h2>\n
\"David<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/span>David Miliband, foreign secretary during the Sri Lankan civil war, told an official he was spending two-thirds of his time on Sri Lanka. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian<\/p>\n

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The diplomatic campaign by former foreign secretary\u00a0David Miliband<\/a>\u00a0to champion aid and human rights during the Sri Lankan humanitarian crisis last year was largely driven by domestic political calculations, according to a Foreign Office official.<\/p>\n

A leaked May 2009 cable from the US embassy in London quotes the official, Tim Waite, a Foreign Office team leader on\u00a0Sri Lanka<\/a>, explaining Miliband’s intense focus on the plight of the country’s Tamils in terms of UK electoral geography.<\/p>\n

“Waite said that much of [Her Majesty’s government] and ministerial attention to Sri Lanka is due to the ‘very vocal’ Tamil diaspora in the UK, numbering over 300,000, who have been protesting in front of parliament since 6 April,” Richard Mills, a political officer at the US embassy, reported.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0“He said that with UK elections on the horizon and many Tamils living in Labour constituencies with slim majorities, the government is paying particular attention to Sri Lanka, with Miliband recently remarking to Waite that he was spending 60% of his time at the moment on Sri Lanka.”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Foreign Office said tonight there was nothing wrong or unusual in explaining to a foreign diplomat the political context for UK foreign policy, and a former prime ministerial envoy on Sri Lanka said that the British involvement was motivated firstly by the scale of the humanitarian crisis.<\/p>\n

The comments quoted in the US cable were made in the midst of a flurry of activity on Sri Lanka by Miliband, as the long civil war between the government and the Tamil Tigers was reaching a bloody conclusion. At the end, some local doctors estimated that as many as a thousand people, mostly Tamils, were dying each day.<\/p>\n

The foreign secretary had just visited Sri Lanka with his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner on 29 April.<\/p>\n

Miliband told parliament two days later that the joint trip had been “to highlight the need to bring the conflict to an end in a way that minimises further civilian casualties; to press the case for the humanitarian relief effort to be ratcheted up, as the UN and EU have been calling for; and to make clear the need for a long-term political settlement that meets the aspirations of all communities in Sri Lanka.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Julian Borger, diplomatic editor The Guardian \u00a0David Miliband, foreign secretary during the Sri Lankan civil war, told an official he was spending two-thirds of his time on Sri Lanka. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian The diplomatic campaign by former foreign secretary\u00a0David Miliband\u00a0to champion aid and human rights during the Sri Lankan humanitarian crisis last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75680","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=75680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}