Lanka ready for talks with LTTE

Chandrika, while admitting that her constitutional reforms package containing devolution proposals for minority Tamils got stuck in parliament due to reluctance of the opposition UNP to provide two third majortity, said her government had finally found `devious means’ to get the constitutional backing without violating the law.

“So now we have to find devious means of getting round strict constitutionalprovisions without being illegal or undemocratic. We have found these methods, but then when you have to do that kind of thing it requires people several times and several elections. We have to do so many other legal things, which takes little time and we have to do it for the best movement.”

For over nine months the government’s package of autonomy proposals made no headway in the parliament as the oppossition UNP with 85 MPs in the 225-member House did not come forward to give its backing.

“All we need is the support of 16 MPs to get the entire constitutional reforms package a constitutional status but the UNP is `stubbornly refusing to give it,” she said.

On Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif, Chandrika said both the leaders had struck a close personal rapport at the summit. Appreciating the two prime ministers for their “cordial approach,” she said the two leaders alongwith the rest of the heads of SAARC member nations made a significant progress incarrying out serious dialogue through informal political consultations.

The discussions at the retreat on July 30 went on for three and half hours and the leaders appeared very serious in their discussions, she said. “The Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan were very amicable to each other. It was very nice and the fact that Sharif is young and very warm person that helped,” she said, adding “I quietly saw to it that they sat next to each other at lunch at the retreat. One spoke in Urdu and the other replied in Hindi… It shows that there is no difference even between two languages.”

The Sri Lankan leader also expressed satisfaction over the just-concluded SAARC summit here but ruled out any mediatory role for the seven-nation grouping to resolve bilateral differences between member states.

She said she was against SAARC `artificially pushing’ itself as a mediator and facilitator to resolve the differences till the `basic frictions’ between member states were ameliorated.

On whether SAARC wouldtake up the role of a mediator and falicitator to resolve political differences between member states, she said, “I think in the years to come that will happen because all associations will begin with regional cooperation and finally end up in political understanding”.