Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

EVENT: The Sri Lanka Army is poised to capture the key rebel town of Kilinochchi, an army spokesman said yesterday.

SIGNIFICANCE: The army has advanced along the western coast to within two miles of Kilinochchi, the administrative centre for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The capture of Kilinochchi would inflict a significant blow against the rebel group, prompting the government to say that it may soon win the three-decade civil war.

ANALYSIS: The Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has been significantly strengthened since the last phase of the conflict against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which resulted in a battlefield stalemate. It now says that the rebels are on the verge of collapse. The government in Colombo, which since mid-2006 has made crushing the LTTE its priority, also says that that the Tigers will soon be wiped out and the war over.

By Very few diplomats have written novels, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that an Indian diplomat, who is currently the official spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs, has written an eminently readable novel on a low-key theme, We Weren`t Lovers Like That . (The Hindu- 2004 January 04) The Diplomat novelist is Navtej Sarna. Yet it wasn`t fiction when 04 years later this same Sarna said `The government of Sri Lanka has been good enough to share with us the interim steps recommended by the APRC for implementation of devolution provisions and official language provisions of the Sri Lankan constitution.` (DM 24th Jan, 2008) Here he made the statement as the Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson. He conveyed the message that the Indian government welcomed this first step towards devolution and India would `continue to work with Sri Lanka and its people to bring about a settlement of the issues in Sri Lanka`.