President Mahinda Rajapaksa has invited officials of the Sri Lanka Foreign Service Association (SLFSA) to see him tomorrow to settle a major row that has broken out between the country's career diplomats and Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama on what they call " an infiltration of the foreign service cadre by outsiders".
The 150-member strong SLFSA has called for established guidelines be complied with in making diplomatic and non-diplomatic appointments.
The Sunday Times (city edition) published the grave concern of the SLFSA in its last week page 1 lead story over the growing number of political appointments to the detriment of the career diplomats.
The association had requested a meeting with the President about a month ago and had been granted one for tomorrow, an SLFSA official said.
The meeting comes in the wake of a major rift emerging between Minister Bogollagama and the SLFSA over the large number of political appointments being made to overseas missions.
Following an emergency meeting of the SLFSA on Friday, a strongly-worded letter was sent by the association to the minister, deputy minister and ministry secretary dissociating themselves from a ministry statement issued earlier in the week giving the credentials of the new batch of diplomats to serve in overseas missions.
They have said they are "disappointed" with the use of the ministry letterhead in that release to state matters that are of "utmost concern" to the SLFSA.
The Foreign Ministry announced nine new appointments last week, five for posts of ambassadors/high commissioners and four other posts. Of these barring three ambassadorial appointments for career diplomats, the others are all drawn from outside the service.
Making the announcement, the Foreign Ministry said that postings from outside the service have been necessitated to supplement the need for specialised officers in the overseas mission … while another reason for this development is "due to the irregular and erratic recruitment to the Service that has occurred in the past."
However, within two days of this announcement, the SLFSA issued a statement saying the Foreign Ministry statement was an attempt to "mislead the public on the political encroachment that is currently taking place to positions other than Heads of Missions that have been reserved for officers duly recruited into the Sri Lanka Foreign Service."
"The appointing authority for recruitment to the SLFS is the Public Service Commission. Appointments made contrary to these provisions would not only lead to diluting the professionalism of the Foreign Service, but also adversely affect Sri Lanka's interests abroad in the medium to long term," the SLFSA said.
It said that contrary to the ministry’s claims, many of the recent political appointees possess hardly any qualifications that can bring value addition to further Sri Lanka's interests abroad and hence this argument is neither justified nor valid.
The latest appointments announced by the Foreign Ministry include three career diplomats, viz., Jayantha Palipane, ambassador-designate to Japan, M. Mahroof, ambassador-designate to Lebanon, and A.M.J. Sadiq as ambassador-designate to Brazil.
The other (non-career) appointments are Thosapala Hewage, Secretary to the Ministry of Ports and Aviation as the new ambassador-designate to Nepal and Newton Gunaratne, former Chairman of ITN as Sri Lanka's ambassador-designate to Myanmar, Suresh Chandra Rajaratnam, a lawyer who appeared formerly for the BOI as Deputy Permanent Representative to the Sri Lanka Mission to the United Nations in New York and Mrs. Manoranee Silva, a lawyer as Deputy High Commissioner at the Sri Lanka High Commission in Pretoria, South Africa, Neville de Silva, a senior journalist at the Sri Lanka Embassy in Bangkok and Sunil Sarath Perera as Minister-Counsellor to the Sri Lanka Embassy in Kuwait.
Lanka faces censure from UN Security Council
With the election of five strongly pro-US countries as non-permanent members of the Security Council for 2009 -- namely Austria, Japan, Mexico,Uganda and Turkey -- some of the European Union countries which have been critical of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka are likely push for a more aggressive UN role in the country.
The Foreign Ministry fears there may be an attempt to place Sri Lanka on the Security Council agenda next year making Sri Lanka vulnerable to UN censure.
A hidden agenda during President Mahinda Rajapaksa's visit to Ankara recently was to solicit Turkish support to stall any moves against Sri Lanka.
With the exception of Libya and Vietnam, the other three non-permanent members in the Security Council next year, namely Burkina Faso, Costa Rica and Croatia, are also strong pro-American. If the government surmises that the threat is real, it is possible that there will be presidential or high level visits to all 10 countries which are non-permanent members of the Security Council.
Compounding the problem further is the appointment of Susan Rice as the new US ambassador to the UN under the incoming Obama administration. She has been described as a ''pro-interventionist'' who believes in direct UN intervention in countries accused of genocide and war crimes-- not to mention violations of human rights and humanitarian law.
Against this backdrop, shouldering the heaviest burden will be Sri Lanka's new Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador HMGS Palihakkara-- a veteran diplomat who has served in multilateral postings before, both in Geneva and in New York in the 1980s.
The Foreign Ministry is expected to ask him to mount a concerted, spirited campaign to prevent any action against Sri Lanka in the Security Council.
But according to the Foreign Service Association, his position has been weakened by the appointment of a non-career diplomat as his deputy with no experience in diplomacy.
Meanwhile, at least 10 to 12 ministers have solicited Foreign Ministry support for overseas junkets during the holiday season. The ministers are apparently seeking visits to foreign capitals, mostly Western capitals, on the pretext of discussing social and economic issues-- including development aid, trade and the environment-- with some of their counterparts overseas. At least three Sri Lankan ambassadors have bluntly told the ministers these proposed visits are ill-timed because most ministers in foreign capitals are taking their vacations during the upcoming Christmas and New Year holidays. | 
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