NEW DELHI: VP Singh, turned his attention to New Delhi’s most pressing foreign policy problem: the restoration of good relations with Sri Lanka, where 25,000 Indian troops are stationed against the wishes of the Sri Lankan Government.
The Prime Minister met for more than an hour with Ranjan Wijeratne, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, who later described Mr. Singh to reporters as “a remarkable personality.”
India’s Foreign Minister, 1K. Gujral, entertained Mr. Wikjeratne at an official dinner on Thursday evening in an apparently relaxed atmosphere that reflected the new Government’s repeated assertions that Sri Lanka will be given priority in foreign affairs.
Indian troops have been in Sri Lanka since August 1987. Their mission has been to disarm ethnic Tamil Militants in the country’s north and east, who were under pressure from the Sri Lankan Army trying to put down a separatist movement.
India’s Invitation to Talks
But public statements and comments in interviews by Indian officials now tend to support what many Sri Lankans have suspected: that New Delhi’s action had more to do with domestic politics, or with Indian fears that Colombo had become too closely linked with the United States, Pakistan and Israel, among other nations.
The Tamil problem in Sri Lanka, worsened by Colombo’s reluctance in the 1970’s and early 1980’s to give ethnic Tamils greater autonomy and stronger minority rights, provided Indian policy makers with a popular cause among more than SO million Tamils in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, a little over 20 miles across a narrow strait form Sri Lanka.
Prime Minister Singh asked Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister, Muthivel Karunanidhi, to come to New Delhi for talks on future moves on Sri Lankan policy. Mr. Karunanidhi is a political ally of the new Prime Minister and also the leader of an Indian Tamil party that had backed Sri Lankam Tamil calls for independence.
Assertions of Torture
Mr. Singh told reporters coming out of an official function that India and Sri Lanka would discuss jointly the removal of Indian troops, whose presence has provoked a violent backlash not only by Sri Lanka’s majority ethnic Sinhalese population but also among Tamils. Tamil civilians, who openly support the Tigers, have accused the India forces of massacre, torture and other violations of human. Rights.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 15, 1989