Supply&Demand
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This is not the complete article. I have picked up some paras which discussed Sri lanka's disastrous foreign policy w.r.t India.
Should be an eye opener for some Srilankan 'India haters' ...
For complete article:
Destroying traditional SLFP Foreign Policy
Should be an eye opener for some Srilankan 'India haters' ...
The proof that they will stop at nothing to destroy the Presidents defences and those of the country can be seen in the manner in which they upset India, and continue to do this. I am aware that there was much pressure on India from the West, and perhaps they would have succeeded in getting India not to vote for us, but two blunders by the so-called liberal democrats certainly helped in the final decision, as we have quite categorically been informed by Indian diplomats.
The first was the publicizing of the claim that India had committed to supporting us, which led to massive pressures in Tamilnadu. The second was the denigration of Tamilnadu politicians, which naturally increased the pressures on the Centre to stand by its own. These pronouncements may well have been blunders, but it would make sense for the Ministry to check on whether anyone were consulted before they were made. I should add that I do not think those who made the statements did so with deliberate intent to upset India, but that there are others with such an agenda is now manifest.
The clear proof that there is a deliberate effort to drive a wedge between India and Sri Lanka and thus make us more dependent on the confrontationalists of the West, who want India also in the same boat was the effort to deceive the President about the Indian Parliamentary delegation. A deliberate lie, which his more responsible Ministers had to refute, was told him,
which nearly led to the cancellation of his meeting with the Indian delegation. Worse, he was also deceived about senior SLFP Ministers, which I believe is designed to cut him away from his natural base.
It was only when J R Jayewardene replaced Senanayake as the leader of the UNP that a different policy, going against the national consensus, was established, and as we know this involved dismissing both Neville Kanakaratne and Shirley Amerasinghe from their positions. The disasters of the slavish adherence to the West that followed, which included hostility towards India in those days, are well known. Fortunately Jayewardenes efforts to invoke Western military aid against the Indians proved abortive though my contacts in the British Ministry of Defence told me that Mrs Thatcher had wanted to comply, until the Foreign Office had dissuaded her.
Despite his initial anti-Indian rhetoric when Jayewardenes foreign policy was proved a failure in 1987, Premadasa as President also soon saw the light, and used the services of Neville Kanakaratne to rebuild relations with India. However, though the Jayewardene excesses were avoided, following the end of the Cold War, there were those in our Foreign Ministry who thought that we had to accept Western models wholesale in a unipolar world. But Mr Kadirgamar had a very different vision and, though at times he found the Ministry more conservative, he revived commitment to the Non-Aligned ideals of the party he had joined.
That was what was planned in the eighties, when the enemy of the West was India, and India intervened to prevent misuse of Trincomalee and Iranawila, as the Annexe to the Indo-Lankan Accord makes clear. I hope similar bases are not contemplated now, in theory against China, but possibly to be used against India too in time if India develops into a respected and independent leader of the Third World as Nehru dreamed. But while I hope such stratagems are not needed in the world of modern technology, we owe it to our people to ensure that this land is not used for hostile moves against any other countries by anyone, Western or Eastern or in between.
For complete article:
Destroying traditional SLFP Foreign Policy