Arms to Lanka, not Army, says India

According to highly placed sources here, this will be a commercial transaction to which a new urgency has been lent by the fall of Elephant Pass last week and the determined onward march of the LTTE towards Jaffna town.

External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh told reporters today at the end of a Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) that in order to “mitigate the hardship inflicted on civilians by the conflict (India will take) such humanitarian measures as become necessary in consultation with Sri Lanka.”

Singh insisted, however, that no request for assistance had been received from Colombo so far.

The only thing that is reportedly holding New Delhi back from finalising the cash-for-weapons deal is an assurance from Colombo, that it will not allow any other country, especially from the neighbourhood, to fish in the troubled military conflict in Sri Lanka.

In the past, Pakistan has sold arms to Colombo, and so has China, Israel and the US. But New Delhi feels that the Palk Straits and further south is within its legitimate sphere of influence and doesn’t want nations like Pakistan to mess around there.

Stressing that the LTTE remains a banned organisation in India, Singh said the government would be “guided in its responses” to developments in the island nation, and was committed to the peaceful resolution of the conflict within the “framework of a united Sri Lanka where all communities can realise their aspirations.”

Clearly, short of military intervention, Singh was not ruling out other forms of contact or cooperation with Colombo in the coming days. He scotched speculation about the evacuation of Sri Lankan troops from Jaffna or the dropping of food-aid to civilians and soldiers there, but was not ready to describe what kind of assistance India was prepared to give to its “close and friendly neighbour.”

Hoping that peace would soon return to Sri Lanka, Singh added significantly, “India is ready to contribute to making that hope a reality".

The event that fuelled speculation about some sort of impending cooperation came with meeting this evening between Sri Lankan foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar — who is here for medical treatment for the last six weeks — and PM Vajpayee. The CCS which met later is said to have thoroughly weighed the pros and cons of Indian action on the island.

Meanwhile, the political scene in the capital also began to hot up. Vajpayee called DMK leader Karunanidhi on this issue, and he is expected here tomorrow. Other Tamil parties in the NDA coalition, the PMK and the MDMK stressed that New Delhi should not get involved in the goings-on, by either sending troops or arms, to Sri Lanka.

MDMK chief Vaiko Gopalswamy, particularly, has been lobbying with both Home minister L K Advani and Jaswant Singh in the last two days to convey his strong feelings on the issue, reminding them of the IPKF misadventure which resulted in large scale deaths of Indian soldiers and officers.

Another issue that clearly worries New Delhi about the war in Sri Lanka is the direct impact that it will have on India. Already, there are about 100,000 refugees in Tamil Nadu and the government is concerned that if the situation worsens in the island, it will have to soon contend with a humanitarian crisis as well.

In Colombo, meanwhile, Sri Lankan president Chandrika Kumaratunga told reporters that she would ask “friendly countries” for help to resolve the crisis, but Jaswant Singh told the media that she hadn’t called PM Vajpayee today for assistance.