COLOMBO, June 20, Reuter: Sri Lanka has protested to India about remarks by Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in which he said Colombo took a flippant attitude to its ethnic conflict.
A Foreign Ministry statement said today acting Minister Tyronne Fernando summoned Indian High Commissioner Jyotindra Dixit last night and protested about Gandhi’s comments, published in the Indian magazine India Today.
“The Sri Lankan government is gravely disturbed that the Indian Prime Minister is without reason or facts continuing to criticize it,” the statement said.
“At one time it was described as without guts, then as vacillating and now as flippant. These statements are made on incorrect information and have no foundation”.
Relations between the two countries worsened after Indian we Sri Lanka’s au planes violated Si space on June4 and dropped food supplies to Tamils in the northern Jaffna Peninsula.
India said it was “humanitarian relief” to Tamils facing starvation because of a government economic blockade and a military offensive against Tamil separatist guerrillas. Colombo denied the starvation charge.
The newspaper The Island yesterday printed parts of Gandhi’s interview with India Today, in which he blamed Sri Lanka for worsening relations between the two countries.
“Sometimes we wonder whether this whole exercise of getting the parties together across the table was not used by Sri Lanka to buy time for the military solution. This has caused the problem”, Gandhi was quoted as saying.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 26, 1987
