MADRAS: Former intelligence Chief K. Mohandas recently charged that vested interests had blocked the efforts of the late Rajiv “Gandhi to put an end to the training of Lankan Tamil militants on this sol.
Initiating a discussion on Indias Sri Lanka policy organized by the Center for South and South East Asian Studies of the Madras University and the Madras chapter of the Society for Indian Ocean. Studies he said that Rajiv Gandhi’s policy advisers and intelligence chiefs had misled him into continuing with the policy of committing the country to Lankans integrity on the one hand but permitting the training of the militants on the other.
Mohandas blamed the “egoism among the top behind the scene men who when once set on a course want to continue the same despite adverse factors because they are afraid that their original stand may be called into question” for the fiasco on the Lankan front.
Such an attitude was obviously absurd he said because in a fast moving world adjustments and readjustments had to be made fairly frequently based on reliable data culled from various sources by a constant monitoring of the developments.
He went on to refer to the BJP demand for the setting up of a parliamentary intelligence committee to scrutinize the RAW budget Madan Lal Khurana letter to Prime Minister Narasimha Rao on the “gross embezzlement of funds” and the reported US financial connections of the senior RAW officials and said the vested interest he had tried to encompass this aspect of the issue foo. “I am sure that the message is clear to you and I do not wish to dwell further on this unsavory subject” he said.
He also suggested the formation of a Preventive Bureau of Foreign Policy Frauds” consisting of MPs known for their integrity and patiotism to monitor the activities of the External Affairs Ministry the Prime Minister’s Office the Cabinet Secretariat the Research and Analysis Service (as RAW is known now) the IB and other intelligence agencies. Only that way the catastrophe of the type experienced on the Lankan policy could be avoided he stressed.
Former External Affairs secretary K-PS. Menon revealed that the Center had decided on the air dropping of food-packets initiating a new phase of direct involvement in the Lankan tangle following severe pressure from the Tamil Nadu government.
The then Tamil Nadu chief secretary had warned the Union government that his state would be in flames if the Center remained active and Jaffna fell to the Lankan armed forces.
The Center was also apprehensive that its bonafides would be questioned by those in the south if it kept quiet when the Tamils were suffering in the neighboring island. Southerners could start wondering why a government which went to the rescue of the Bangladesh’s was not doing anything in the case of Lanka.
Menon however felt that perhaps the failure on the policy front in the wake of the IPKF intervention could be traced to the fact that there was little co-ordination between the various agencies which were at work Further it was perhaps wrong in the first place to have started giving training to the Lanka militants in this country.
All the same he maintained those in power in this state had failed to give a proper appraisal of the undesirable Activites of the militants to the Center. If only they had necessary remedial action could have been taken at the appropriate time
Thomas Abraham former Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka said that India should not have taken an active interventionist role.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 24, 1992
