No troop withdrawal from north, insists Rajapaksa
AP
Sri Lankan army soldiers on Thursday march during rehearsals in Colombo
to commemorate the government's victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels in
an annual military parade scheduled for May 19.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Saturday
rejected international calls to withdraw troops from the country’s
former war zones, warning that the LTTE diaspora had not given up
separatism.
“Some are shouting remove military camps
from the north and east,” Mr Rajapaksa said at a ceremony to mark
‘victory day’ on the third anniversary of crushing of the Tamil Tigers.
Claiming that “the LTTE diaspora had not given up their separatist
ideas, ” the President said, “We cannot jeopardise national security by
removing camps.”
His remarks came hours after US
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said Colombo should demilitarise the
Tamil dominated embattled north and do more to protect human rights.
Sri Lanka’s foreign minister G M Peiris had a 45-minute meeting with Ms
Clinton in Washington after which he told reporters that Colombo will
carry out its own investigation into the rights abuses during the final
phase of the island’s civil war.
Mr Rajapaksa
rejected conjectures that his forces were involved in the civil
administration in the Tamil-dominated north. “What the Eelamist
terrorists could not do through decades of war, they are now trying to
achieve through other means,” Mr Rajapaksa said.
The
UN, the US as well as India has stressed upon the Lankan administration
to demilitarise the former conflict areas and to carry out a national
reconciliation. A recommendation to de-escalate military presence in the
north and east also figures in Rajapakasa’s own Lessons Learnt and
Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) report.
The country
marked the ‘victory day’ with a grand military display by Air force
jets, steam passed by naval craft and a parade by the army. With over
12000 security forces personnel on display, this was the biggest
military show since the end of the civil war in which 32 Sri Lankan
fighter jets were on display and 72 warships steamed past.
In
his address, the Sri Lankan President asked the international community
to see the progress of the country since the end of the three decades
old armed conflict in “positive light.”
“We are a
nation who sit equally with other members of the United Nations. We
treat them equally. We have the strength to solve our own problems,”
Rajapaksa said.
The Sri Lankan leader said the
international governments must appreciate the services of his government
towards its communities since the war ended. “We will not abdicate our
responsibilities. We have already implemented (recommendations) what we
can agree with (in the LLRC). He said his government would not waste the
opportunity to make use of the peace prevailing in the island after 30
years of bloody clashes.
The country marked the
‘victory day’ with a grand military display by Air force jets, steam
passed by naval craft and a parade by the army. With over 12000 security
forces personnel on display, this was the biggest military show since
the end of the civil war in which 32 Sri Lankan fighter jets were on
display and 72 warships steamed past.
The President
presented 15 ‘parama veera vibhushana’, the nations highest gallantary
awards to the next of the kin of soldiers who made the supreme sacrifice
in the battle against the LTTE.
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