Global interest in strategy: Colombo

Several countries, including Pakistan, have expressed the desire to learn from Sri Lanka’s experience in successfully fighting terrorism, according to Sri Lankan Army chief Jagath Jayasuriya. Speaking at his Regimental Headquarters here on Thursday, Lieutenant-General Jayasuriya said the Army had no hesitation in sharing the knowledge with the armies of other countries. The Army chief said, in his assessment, Sri Lanka’s military strength needed to be enhanced from the present 2, 00,000 to 2, 25,000. “The actual new recruits could be around 50,000as for the last two-and-half years those eligible to retire were not permitted due to war.” Lieutenant-General Jayasuriya said his endeavour would be to transform the Army to cope with post-conflict challenges.

He said the Army would soon send more of its engineers for additional demining work. “I have already sent 400 engineering troops for de-mining and I am sending more battalions to be trained in ‘humanitarian demining,” he said and added that the military did not have a precise estimate of land mines planted by the LTTE. “An area about 3,100 square miles [8,000 sq.km.], including Mannar, Kilinochchi, Mullaithivu and parts of Jaffna districts, must be demined before it will be safe enough for the Tamils to return. Without de-mining, I don’t think we can take a chance,” said the General.

“We have four international non-governmental organizations helping us now and I want to use mechanized mine clearing to speed up the process,” he added. Nearly 2.6 lakh war-displaced persons are sheltered in temporary government transition camps and pressure is growing on the government to let them return to their original homes.

The government is committed to a 180-day programme for rehabilitation but holds that there is no way the war-displaced can return immediately as the areas, which were earlier under the control of the LTTE, are heavily mined and basic infrastructure is in rubble.

India Pakistan positive on talks

Sharm-el-sheikh: Indian foreign secretary Shiv shankar menon and his Pakistani counterpart Salman basher met here late on Tuesday night and again briefly on Wednesday as part of renewed efforts by the two countries to restart the dialogue process and address the recurring problem of terrorists using Pakistani territory to launch attacks in India.

Mr. Menon said Tuesday’s talks, which lasted 90 minutes, involved “good,” “detailed and lengthy” discussion on the issues he and Mr.bashir had been tasked to take up. Apart from the dossier Pakistan had prepared on its investigations in to the Mumbai terrorist attack, the foreign secretary said he was briefed by his counterpart on the steps Islamabad had taken. “I told him of our concerns and he told us what they had done and of their determination to fight terrorism,”Mr.Menon said, “but our jobs was to report back to our leaders, not draw conclusions”.

Although the Indian side had earlier suggested Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and yousaf raza gilani could. “Meet” the press together after their scheduled meeting on July 16, Mr, Menon was unwilling to predict the outcome of the principals’ meeting, including whether or not there would be a joint statement of some kind. He said the question of “form” was less important than dealing with the condition generating stress in the relationship and urged the media not to speculate about what still a work in progress, “the less you speculate, the less likely you are to go wrong,” he said.

Speaking to The Hindu, Pakistani foreign Ministry officials also described the foreign secretaries’ meeting as positive. “Quite a lot has been done on our side (to address India’s concerns),” a Pakistani official said. “Now let us see if the two prime Ministers can agree to a resumption of the dialogue process”. As of now, it appears the Indian side is looking only for modest gain from sharm-el-sheikh and that there is considerable internal resistance to the resumption of the composite dialogue. “I don’t think there will be any dramatic announcement here,” a key south block official said. But he added that this did not mean there had not been very definite forward movement. “Things are moving slowly, but they are moving.”

In private, Indian and Pakistani officials said a further round of “talks about talks” could be held on the sidelines of the U.N. general assembly in September, though perhaps only at the foreign minister or foreign secretaries level. Mr.Menon said the Pakistani dossier on Mumbai which is still being evaluated by India-named five individuals who were under arrest there, nine who were proclaimed offenders but absconding and some others who might also be involved in the conspiracy. “The names of terrorist organization also figure,” he said declining to provide any details since Pakistan had not made the report public.

On June 17, 2009, Dr.Singh and President Asif ali zardari of Pakistan met on the sidelines of the shanghai cooperation organization summit in Yekaterinburg and agreed to ask their foreign secretaries to discuss what Pakistan had done and could do to address India’s concerns relating to terrorism.

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