Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama told parliament yesterday (08th ), that the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa will leave no room for any foreign countries to interfere in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka or to compromise by letter or deed the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country.
The Minister made this observation in winding up a six hour adjournment debate held today in the Sri Lanka Parliament to discuss, an earlier adjournment debate on Sri Lanka held in the British House of Commons on 2 May 2007. The debate was called by the Janatha Vimukthi Premanuma (JVP) MP Wimal Weerawansa, and members from the UNP, the JVP, the JHU, the TNA, as well Government members participated in it.
Minister Bogollagama who observed that he did not think that this debate should have taken place in the British Parliament in the first place, however held that parliaments were the best judges of what they did. He said the current debate in the Sri Lanka parliament mirrored to some extent that seen in the British House of Commons, where those who held different points of view could express themselves. He emphasized that the holding of this debate in the UK had not in anyway hurt the very positive bi-lateral relations that existed between Sri Lanka and the UK.
The Minister said notwithstanding some negative comments made by a group of MPs who spoke, who had styled themselves as the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils (APPG - T), a clear message that came out as a result of this debate was that the British Government rejected totally the suggestion by some of the APPG-T members to lift the proscription of the LTTE that currently operates in the UK. He quoted the British Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Dr. Kim Howells, as stating during the course of the debate "we have repeatedly urged the LTTE to move away from the path of violence.
In the absence of a full renunciation of terrorism in deed and word, there can be no questions of reconsidering their proscribed status." He added that Dr Howells had also acknowledged that "the ability of the LTTE to raise funds overseas helps to sustain its ability to carry out violent acts and reduces the incentive to move away from the path of violence", that "LTTE fundraising activity in the United Kingdom encourages war, not peace", and that he had recently met British security authorities "to discuss how we [the U.K.] could counter the bullying, threats and acts of fraud that are used regularly to extract money from the Tamil population and others in the country".
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