By Our Staff Reporter NEW DELHE: Indian premier Rajiv Gandhi rejected on June 6 the Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premedasa’s demand that the $0,000 Indian troops stationed in the island nation withdraw by July 29, exactly two years after they had been admitted by his predecessor president Junius Jayewardhene.
Indian external affairs ministry sources said they had not been consulted about the withdrawal of the troops and the decision was arbitrarily taken by the Sri Lankan, president. Any Indian troop withdrawal could not be decided by looking at the calendar an official said.
The Sri Lankan president had announced on June 1 that he wanted the Indian troops to be withdrawn. He is evidently keen that the summit conference of the South Asian Nations (SAARC) be
held without the presence of any foreign troops in the nation. The summit is scheduled November 1989.
Evidently emboldened with his talks with the militant Tamil Tigers or LTTE the Sn Lankan president decided to make public announcement asking for the withdrawal of the Indian forces from the island nation.
Even though the Tamil Tigers were trained and equipped by the Indian army, they fell out with it because they refused to accept the hegemony of India. The Tamil tigers and the Indian Peace Keeping Force as the Indian troops are officially called have been fighting each other. Over a thousand Indian soldiers have been killed in Sri Lanka for the last two years. Indian opposition parties have been strongly denouncing the involvement of Indian troops in Sri Lanka and Rajiv Gandhi is under pressure to withdraw them without making much loss of lives but at the same time India would not like that its withdrawal be dictated by a smaller nation.
Political observers see Gandhi’s refusal as yet another incident of insensitivity towards the smaller neighbors of the sub continental nation, “The whole Sri Lankan intervention was ill conceived, ill planned and ill executed,” a top defense analyst told WSN.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 9, 1989
