Colombo, October 25 The LTTE has criticised the proposed Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) between India and Sri Lanka, saying that it will upset the military balance and threaten the peace process in Sri Lanka.
In a statement broadcast by the Voice of Tigers radio, the LTTE’s political advisor, Anton Balasingham, said that the proposed agreement would tilt the military balance between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the LTTE, and further strain an already fragile peace process.
Sri Lankan and Indian officials had finalized a draft DCA in a meeting in Colombo on last Tuesday. The draft is to be considered by the political leaderships of these two countries and an agreement signed "within weeks" reports said.
Non-LTTE Sri Lankan Tamils have also bitterly opposed the proposed defence pact. In a front page editorial on Sunday, the Tamil daily Thinakkural said that India would have to clarify whether the pact was aimed at scuttling the Sri Lankan Tamils’ struggle for substantial autonomy based on their right to self-determination.
A commentator in the popular paper Sunday Virakesari even went to the extent of accusing India of fishing in the troubled waters of Sri Lanka to establish its economic and military hegemony over the entire island.
Sengotan, the writer, predicted that once the Sinhala-Tamil conflict was resolved, Sri Lankans would have to jointly fight a long and destructive war against India!
The edit in Thinakkural pointed out those successive governments of Sri Lanka had wanted to use India to crush the legitimate struggle of the Tamils.
Thinakkural wondered if underlying all this, there was a belief that India would be a stumbling block to the Tamils’ movement to secure substantial self-rule, based on their right to self-determination.
"It is India’s responsibility to clear doubts in this regard, " the edit said. Thinakkural made a veiled attack on Tamil Nadu leaders like the DMK leader, M. Karunanidhi, and the MDMK leader, Vaiko (who claimed to support the cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils) for not raising their voice against the proposed defence pact with Sri Lanka.
In his article in the Sundar Virakesari, writer Senkotan warned that India’s actions might finally lead to a war between that country and India.
The proposed Sri Lanka-India defence pact was not only aimed at crushing the Tamil struggle for self determination, but was also meant to increase Indian hegemony over Sri Lanka as a whole, the author alleged.
He warned that India had a plan to use the defence cooperation agreement to sell out-dated equipment to the Sri Lankan armed forces and get a foothold in the Palaly airfied in Jaffna by offering full aid to repair and upgrade it.
He said that in the guise of globalisation, Indian goods were flooding the Sri Lankan market. The Indian Oil Corporation had entered the Sri Lankan petroleum sector. The Trincomalee oil tanks had also been leased out to the Indians.
But sections of the Sinhala polity had begun opposing these Indian inroads, Sengotan pointed out. When a second Indian oil company, Bharat Petroleum, wanted to enter the oil sector, trade unions belonging to the Sinhala nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna had protested. President Chandrika Kumaratunga did not accept the Indian condition that the Palaly airport could be used only by Sri Lanka and India, and she ordered that the repair work be undertaken by the Sri Lankans themselves, Sengotan said.
The writer said that India was only fishing in the troubled waters of Sri Lanka and predicted that after the ethnic question (the fight between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils) was resolved, Sri Lankans, as a whole, would have to begin a long and destructive war against India.
