Never advised India on tackling insurgency: SL

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Professor G L Peiris, who is on a visit to United States, emphasised on Tuesday that India should not be concerned over the island nation's deep-rooted ties with China.

In an interaction that followed his address to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies -- a leading Washington, DC-based think tank -- Peiris also denied reports about  Sri Lanka advising India on how to deal with its internal problems like separatist insurgencies.

"We have very cordial relations with both countries," he declared, "and as far as India is concerned, we have a bilateral relationship, a free trade agreement, which has been mutually beneficial."

Peiris said, "India is involved in many things -- they are playing a big role in the railway network in the north (home to the majority of the Tamil populace). They are also an important player in the power sector."

At the same time, the foreign minister admitted, "We have a warm and cordial relationship with China. China is active with regard to our ports and harbours in particular."

Peiris emphatically declared, "We have not come across any problems (with New Delhi because of Colombo's close relations with Beijing)."

But by the same token, he noted, "China has been a good friend, in times good and bad, but we have not had any difficult issues to deal with arising from the bilateral relationship between those two countries."

Speaking on reports about Lanka advising India on dealing with its internal problems in the wake of the army's success in annihilating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Peiris said, "That's not correct. We have not been so presumptuous as to advice the government of India on how to deal with their problems, and we only wish that other people will not gratuitously advise us what to do."

"We have certainly not taken liberties like that with India or with any government at all," he added.

In his address, Peiris painted a glowing picture of a shining Sri Lanka in the changed circumstances, following the demise of the LTTE and its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. "There is a total change of mood in the country. There is a mood of optimism, of expectation," he claimed

The violence in the country, he said, "has been consigned to the past. We have at last been able to shake off this overpowering constraint which inhibited social and economic or any other form of development in Sri Lanka."

Peiris said if one visits Sri Lanka now, "you will see smiles on the faces of people, no longer fear in their hearts. The whole country is coming alive."

But he acknowledged that he agreed entirely with Ambassador Teresita Schaffer, a former US envoy to Sri Lanka and now the director of the South Asia Programme at the CSIS, that "winning peace is as daunting a task as winning the war."

Peiris went on to describe how the President Mahinda Rajapakse-led government had "achieved a great deal with regard to the resettlement of the internally displaced people -- people who have suffered great pain and anguish for a long period."

He added, "As many as 80 percent of" IDPs had been resettled. "By resettlement, we mean not just physically locating them in their natural habitat as it were, but also enabling them to live in those areas with a sense of dignity," he said.

The minister added, "The Tamil diaspora should not feel alienated -- they must not feel that there is nothing they can do, that they are outsiders. They must be encouraged to play a very vigorous role in rebuilding. The President's approach is totally inclusive -- he wants to bring in everybody and he has repeatedly emphasised during the last year that the defeat of the LTTE is not an occasion for jubilation or exultation, but rather an opportunity for renewed commitment to the accelerated economic and social development of the country for the benefit of the people."