{"id":41433,"date":"2012-05-15T13:09:14","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T13:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=41433"},"modified":"2012-05-15T13:09:14","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T13:09:14","slug":"indias-stance-towards-eelam-war-iv-changed-in-oct-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/indias-stance-towards-eelam-war-iv-changed-in-oct-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018India\u2019s Stance Towards Eelam War IV Changed In Oct. 2008\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By\u00a0R. K. Radharishnan \/ The Hindu &#8211;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>India stance towards the Eelam War IV changed from \u2018negotiations\u2019 and \u2018peace talks\u2019 between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers to \u2018terrorism should be countered with resolve\u2019 in late 2008, a book written with considerable establishment support, \u2018Gota\u2019s War,\u2019 launched here on Monday has said.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_41434\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/indias-stance-towards-eelam-war-iv-changed-in-oct-2008\/narayanan\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-41434\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-41434\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-41434\" title=\"Narayanan\" src=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Narayanan-300x181.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"181\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Narayanan-300x181.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Narayanan.jpg 583w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-41434\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">National Security Advisor M.K.Narayanan<\/p><\/div>\n<p>This means that the Indian change of heart happened much before its then National Security Advisor M.K.Narayanan flew to Chennai to assure DMK president M.Karunanidhi in April 2009, that there will be a temporary ceasefire ahead of the May 2009 elections. In effect, the Congress-led UPA government was telling its one of its biggest coalition partners one thing, while its policy was firmly another. Mr.Narayanan later met Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on April 29, 2009. From available accounts, the President, at that point, did not \u201ccave in\u201d to any of the demands made by India.<\/p>\n<p>From 2006, Sri Lankan forces and the Tamil Tigers, who held vast swatches of land in the north and east Sri Lanka fought a war that displaced almost all the people in the region, and led to innumerable deaths. Sri Lankan forces prevailed on May 18, 2009, and preparations are underway to celebrate the third anniversary on a massive scale across the country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was only after October 2008 following a visit to India by Basil Rajapaksa that the Indian stance seemed to change completely and they dropped all mention of negotiations and peace talks even from their public statements on Sri Lanka\u2026 [India] said that] terrorism should be countered with resolve. A great change from what we have seen before,\u201d said Sri Lankan President\u2019s Secretary Lalith Weeratunga, paraphrasing a few lines from the book, at its launch here on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>According to the book, after Mr.Basil Rajapaksa\u2019s visit, the tone of the joint statement put out to mark the visit was \u2018distinctly different.\u2019 \u201cIndia had expressed the usual concerns about the humanitarian situation in the north and the need for a negotiated political settlement. But at the same time it said that \u2018both sides agreed that terrorism should be countered with resolve.\u2019 Most importantly, the idea that there was \u2018no military solution to the conflict\u2019 which had been the centrepiece of earlier Indian statements on Sri Lanka, had been dropped. From this time until the end of the war, the Indians never again said publicly or privately, that there was no military solution to the conflict,\u201d the book notes.<\/p>\n<p>On an earlier occasion, at a seminar on defeating terrorism held here, Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa had held that \u2018managing India\u2019 was the key to winning the war against the Tamil Tigers. This was done in a deft manner, with the setting up of the Troika \u2013 an arrangement where three top bureaucrats each from both countries are constantly in touch. \u201cMr. Basil Rajapaksa, Minister today, at that time a Member of Parliament, led the troika, that included Gota and myself\u2026Troika was a unique experiment that brought Sri Lanka India relations to a new high\u2026This was a ground breaking arrangement and unique in the annals of bilateral diplomatic relations, at least in south Asia,\u201d said Mr.Weeratunga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":41434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-from-foreign-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - 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