ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

India backs Lanka's peace effort, says Sushma

Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj has said India supports the efforts being made by the Sri Lankan government to resolve the ethnic problem there.

She also made it clear that India was strongly opposed to terrorism, be it in India or Lanka. The minister conveyed this in a 45-minute meeting with Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga in Colombo, where she led an Indian delegation to the first SAARC communications ministers' conference held from May 22 to 24.

Swaraj emphasised the importance attached by her government to relations with Lanka. Both sides also had a lively discussion on the issue of empowerment of women in the political process, the proposal for reservation of one-third of parliamentary seats for women in India and the positive impact of similar reservations for women introduced earlier in the local bodies and village panchayats in India. President Kumaratunga briefed the minister on the forthcoming provincial council elections in Sri Lanka.

Leader of the opposition in Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickramasinghe, called on Swaraj, while Lankan minister for communications, Mangala Samaraweera, hosted a breakfast meeting in her honour. Lankan Muslim Congress leader M H M Ashraff, who is also the minister of shipping, ports, rehabilitation and reconstruction, invited her for tea.

The minister was impressed with the evident desire of all sections of political opinion in Lanka to establish contacts with the new government in India and to strengthen Indo-Sri Lankan relations, an official press release in New Delhi stated.

Meanwhile, in Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam today admitted to losing 14 of their fighters in an attack on troops in eastern Sri Lanka yesterday that also left four others, including two soldiers, dead. The rebels' clandestine Voice of Tigers radio said in its morning broadcast that 14 of their cadres were killed when they attacked troops guarding a bridge at Chenkaladi in Batticaloa district.

It said the LTTE destroyed the army post and captured weapons and other items belonging to the soldiers.

A military communique issued today said besides the rebels, two soldiers, a member of the pro-government Tamil group, People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam, and a civilian, were killed and 16 others -- eight soldiers, five PLOTE members and three civilians -- wounded in the attack.

It said a group of militants attacked the troops guarding the bridge with mortars and small arms and also fired mortars at a nearby army detachment. ''Troops effectively retaliated with mortars and artillery, forcing the terrorists to withdraw with their casualties,'' it said.

Meanwhile, troops engaged in a major offensive to open a land route to the northern Jaffna peninsula shot dead four militants in an encounter near Mankulam yesterday, the military communique added.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report