Kohona: My president Mahindra Rajapakse visited Nepal a couple of months ago. In that visit the two parties agreed upon a number of items. My visit is to follow-up on that visit. We talked about the operationalisation of the Joint Commission that had been agreed upon by the two sides. The Joint Commission will affect a range of issues including further cooperation between the two sides on an economic package and on issues such as health and education. Sri Lanka has had free health and education systems for over 60 years. There has been an offer made by Sri Lanka to help Nepal with developing its health and education systems. We discussed these two items further. We also talked about rekindling the activities between the business councils of Sri Lanka and Nepal. I am sure this will happen very soon. Similarly, we discussed Sri Lanka's Bureau of Investment.
Sri Lanka has had a Bureau of Investment since about the 1980s. It has been very successful in deriving foreign direct investment. Nepal is now in process of encouraging foreign direct investment. And it is an area in which we could very productively cooperate with Nepal.
An issue that we discussed extensively during this visit is the issue of climate change. Climate and global warming is threatening almost every country in the world and in the SAARC region its affect will range from coastal inundation to glacier melting. We talked about the possibility of developing a common SAARC position on climate change and global warming as we approach the Copenhagen Review Conference in December.
Another issue that came up was terrorism. Sri Lanka suffered from terrorism for over 27 years. Fortunately we have succeeded in overcoming our terrorist challenge. But terrorism remained a threat to almost every country in the SAARC and the need for further collaboration, more intense cooperation, especially in the area of intelligence sharing, was discussed.
Q: Did Sri Lanka and Nepal agree on any specific agendas?Kohona: No, there is no specific agreement other than to operationalise the joint commission. The point of operationalising the joint commission would be that the agreement reached earlier would be given effect in a concrete manner so that the people of the two countries will be benefit in the long run.
Q: Was there any talk of establishing a direct flight connection between the two countries?Kohona: That was something we discussed at almost every meeting. The direct flight will happen very soon. We are aware that Sri Lanka Airlines is now going into the final details of the establishment of direct flight so that the connectivity between the two countries will be strengthened further. There are already around 40,000 Sri Lankan tourists who visit Nepal every year. With the establishment of the direct air link, we are confident that this number will go up further. We also hope that this will encourage Nepalis to visit Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has some of the oldest Buddhist shrines in the world and Nepalis will be able to come directly to Sri Lanka to visit these in the future.
Q: How is Sri Lanka engaged in developing Lumbini as a site of pilgrimage for Buddhists?Kohona: We are building a pilgrim rest in Kapilvastu. We hope to complete the construction very soon. Whatever activity that is undertaken on a multilateral basis to develop Kapilvastu as a place of pilgrimage will be supported by Sri Lanka. We recognize that this is one of the most important sites for Buddhists.
Q: What political issues did you discuss with Nepali officers and leaders?
Kohona: I didn't want to comment on Nepal's internal problems, but we did talk about the way in which Sri Lanka resolved its problems. The world thinks that it was a problem with the Tamils of Sri Lanka. But it is very important to realize that from the very beginning the Sri Lankan government made a distinction between the Tamils and the LTTE. The LTTE was a terrorist organization and eventually it was decided that we were going to deal with it in a military manner. But we kept normal Tamils away from that. The Tamils are part of our population and we were going to deal with them in a political manner. That contributed significantly to our success because many Tamils did not support the LTTE. They were very happy to run away from the LTTE and come under government protection. The LTTE increasingly found itself isolated from the population it purported to represent.
We tries to negotiate with the LTTE over and over so that it could be brought back into the democratic process. But it was intransigent and so we could not wait indefinitely. We could also not tolerate a terrorist organization that was actually controlling territory within Sri Lanka.
Q: Did you ever expect that the civil war would end?
Kohona: We were told many times, especially by our international interlocutors, that we should not deal with the LTTE militarily. We were told that we would lose if we did so. In fact, at the start of international involvement in 2002, we concluded a ceasefire agreement under which a part of the country was hideout given to the LTTE. The expectation was that the LTTE would negotiate a peaceful settlement. But that did not materialize. Instead, they expanded their area of control. For us, this was a bitter experience. So in 2008, we terminated the ceasefire agreement and proceeded to deal with the LTTE in a military manner.
Q: Are there any remnants of the LTTE still around?Kohona: In Sri Lanka, there is no LTTE left. Internationally, there may be remnants of it still trying to make a noise. We think that we will either be able to persuade them to join the democratic mainstream or they will lose interest in a cause that is obviously lost now. We are making every effort to ensure that the Tamil minority of Sri Lanka is treated with dignity, as a part of our population. Their interests will be protected and they will participate fully, like the rest of the population, in the democratic process.
Q: There were reports regarding the high rate of civilian casualties in the assault against the LTTE.Kohona: These are allegations made for the sake of convenience, for propaganda purposes by the LTTE and its supporters at the time and were picked up by certain elements of the international community. We are sorry that they tended to go down that path. But the government of Sri Lanka is very confident that we did our best to ensure that civilians weren't harmed in our effort to eliminate the LTTE.
Q: There are also reports that the Sri Lankan state has tried to gag the media.Kohona: Sri Lanka is a country that guarantees the freedom of expression. It is in the constitution. I am aware that some media personnel have been hurt or met with their deaths over the past few months. But you cannot attribute those incidents to a conscious or organized effort on the part of the state authorities to counter media freedom. There are over 70 media outlets in Sri Lanka, and only four of those are controlled by the government. The rest are rampantly independent.
Q: Why have you blocked international agencies from providing humanitarian aid to the victims of war?Kohona: We haven't done that at all. Nobody's been blocked. There are 54 NGOs working with the displaced persons as we speak. But what we have said is, “if you want to come work in Sri Lanka, then you must bring your own funding and have a specific project. You can't come to Sri Lanka simply looking for work because it's an island in the sun and the beaches are beautiful and the hotels grand.” Because Sri Lanka has so many natural attractions, especially attractions that are desirable to people from cold climates, there is a tendency to pour into Sri Lanka looking for something to do. We do not want people like that.
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