Asia Times: Indian Navy on high alert for Jaffna evacuation


	May 24, 2000	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Indian Navy on high alert for Jaffna evacuation
By Mahesh Uniyal

NEW DELHI - The Indian Navy is in a state of high alert for the possible evacuation of Sri Lankan troops from the Jaffna peninsula, as New Delhi moves closer to heeding Colombo's unofficial pleas for help against the Tamil Tigers.

Heavily armed Indian naval ships were ready to move in to help pull out the more than 30,000 Sri Lankan troops who, according to state-censored media reports from Sri Lanka, were repulsing Tiger rebel assaults on the key city of Jaffna. ''We are on standby and are ready to move at short notice,'' newspapers quoted unnamed senior government officials as saying.

According to the authoritative daily The Hindu, ''the dominant view in the (Indian) government is that the Sri Lankan forces, suffering from low morale, are finding it extremely hard to hold on to Jaffna.''

The decision to order naval readiness for likely evacuation was said to have been taken at a special meeting Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had with his cabinet colleagues late on Sunday to discuss New Delhi's role in Sri Lanka. Vajpayee had earlier told reporters: ''If we have to take any step, we are ready for it.''

Although New Delhi was said to be waiting for a formal request from Colombo, Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar had indicated, in media interviews published in India and Sri Lanka, his government's keenness for Indian help.

Senior Indian and Sri Lankan military officials late last week met in the southern India city of Bangalore. The Sri Lankan chief of defense staff, General Rohan De'Silva Daluvatte, and Sri Lankan Deputy Foreign Minister Lakshman Kirialla, were also in Bangalore last week. However, India's defense ministry in a press statement on Tuesday denied media reports that the Sri Lankan defense chief had discussed Indian military involvement. It clarified that Daluvatte was on a ''private visit'' to Bangalore.

In recent weeks, opposition parties in Sri Lanka along with the influential Buddhist clergy that once opposed this, have sought Indian help to save government troops from the advancing Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Jaffna. Although it had expressed readiness to broker peace talks between the government and the Tigers, New Delhi was still shying away from any military involvement in the Sri Lankan crisis. India has preferred a hands-off policy ever since a controversial military intervention in the late 1980s at Colombo's invitation to disarm the Tigers.

In recent weeks, key Western nations had hinted at India's responsibility to help resolve the ethnic conflict that has claimed more than 60,000 lives in the past 17 years. The Tigers are battling for a separate home for the minority Tamils in the Indian Ocean island nation, alleging discrimination by the majority Sinhala community.

''India now has had time to digest events. I feel it's sounding international opinion, gearing itself for assuming a role, even if it be thrust upon it by events,'' the Sri Lankan foreign minister told the New Delhi-based Outlook magazine. In another interview with the Sri Lankan newspaper Daily News, he said Colombo wanted India and Norway to be involved in finding a ''negotiated political settlement''.

''It could be an effort where India is involved and . . . also Norway. Now the United States is also saying it would like to get involved in the process in a suitable capacity, but always through India . . . with the consent of India,'' Kadirgamar told the Daily News.

Kadirgamar's statement was in keeping with New Delhi's stand that it would not get involved without a request from Colombo and an acknowledgement by the international community that India had to be a crucial part of any external diplomatic intervention in Sri Lanka. Norway, the United States and the European Union have indicated that India cannot stand aloof.

Earlier this month, Erik Solheim, special advisor on Sri Lanka to the Norwegian government, came here to brief New Delhi of the Norwegian diplomatic initiative on the Sri Lankan crisis. Before fighting broke out in Jaffna, Oslo had persuaded Colombo and the Tigers to hold talks in the Norwegian capital in May or June. The Sri Lankan minister said that Norway ''recognized India's valuable position in the region and the inevitability of Indian involvement in this issue''.

The Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister Raymond Johansen, who was in the Sri Lankan capital this week on a peace diplomacy mission, was quoted in news reports from Colombo as saying that India had played a ''very important role and will continue to play a very important role'' in resolving the ethnic crisis.

The United States too is believed to be closely involved in the Norwegian peace initiative and in touch with India on this. A senior US administration official told The Hindu newspaper that Washington was in close touch with New Delhi on the developments in Sri Lanka. ''We believe that India is the key outside power and that anything to be done by the international community must be done very much with India,'' US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Karl F Inderfuth, told the newspaper in a mid-May interview in Washington.

The European Union too was reportedly taking interest and said to be ready to be part of an India-led peace initiative in Sri Lanka.

New Delhi believes that a solution to the crisis cannot be found by military means, but must be one that neither breaks up the country nor ignores the legitimate complaints of the Tamils of Sri Lanka.

(Inter Press Service)

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