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PM’s office used by Commerce Minister
The Prime Minister’s office has been used, this time by a Cabinet Minister, ignoring accepted protocol, to make a direct request to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for a housing scheme for the Muslims. Commerce Minister Rishad Bathiudeen obtained the help of Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne to forward an appeal to Premier Sharif through the Pakistan High Commissioner Qasim Quereshi.
A senior spokesman for the External Affairs Ministry told the Sunday Times yesterday that whenever a Minister or Ministry was making a request for foreign assistance, it must go through the Department of External Resources of the Ministry of Finance which comes under President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
He said the Ministry of External Affairs was usually kept informed. In this instance Minister Bathiudeen has by-passed both the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of External Affairs by seeking the good offices of the Prime Minister. ”The coordinating agency (for seeking foreign aid) is the External Resources Department of the Ministry of Finance. They must go through that department,” the MEA official said.
“I briefed the Pakistan High Commissioner in Sri Lanka about the issue after Premier Jayaratne’s consent,” Mr. Bathiudeen told the Islamabad-based Tribune newspaper. “Turkey and Qatar have already started working in North province where Muslim community was living in deplorable condition,” he said. More than 300,000 Hindus with the support of international donors and India had successfully been resettled in their ancestral places. It was only the Muslims who were living in deplorable condition, the newspaper quoted the minister as saying.
The newspaper said “Bathiudeen also arranged a trip for Muslim diplomats to visit Muslim IDPs in August this year so that ground realities could be observed by the foreigners. “I briefed Pakistani High Commissioner in Sri Lanka about the issue—I after Sri Lankan PM’s consent wrote to Premier Sharif for aid,” he said. This letter through Pakistan High Commissioner was sent to Premier Sharif in November this year; he said adding he had yet to receive an official response from Mr. Sharif.
Mr. Bathiudeen said government MPs, including Hunais Farook and A.H.M. Azwer, and opposition MPs Harin Fernando, Sujeewa Senasinghe and Kabir Hashim were supporting the move, the newspaper reported. Mr. Sharif’s Media Secretary Mohiuddin Wani, when contacted, promised to give his input on this issue by Dec 26, the newspaper reported.
“The Sri Lankan Minister continued to narrate that Muslims were erased from the north province of Sri Lanka. The positive role northern Muslims played in commercial and trading activities in the north prior to expulsion was completely erased by long absence through displacement. Rights to ownerships have to be regained and due opportunities have to be given in all old and new commercial centres where Muslims owned business, commercial and industrial establishments.
“In Jaffna Town alone more 800 commercial establishments were lost. The estimated number of the Northern Muslim population at present is approximately 35,000 families. They seek to return to around 100 former community concentrations in the north. At least 9,076 landless Muslim returnee families need to be provided with shelter and other essential facilities such as water, electricity, roads and other fundamentals,” the newspaper reported.
“Peace with Justice to all. The aspiration that must become reality is, North Muslims want to return home.” This is a story about an unfortunate community and their experience of ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka. The voice is of a people who have not been properly heard and a community who have waited 22 years to return to their homes, the appeal is for help to return home with dignity, self-respect peace and stability,” the newspaper said.