A report from the News Desk of a service calling itself Colombo Page said on April 3: "Former minister of foreign affairs Lakshman Kadirgamar has stressed the importance of drafting a permanent foreign policy for Sri Lanka. He said in parliament that such a permanent policy would help rebuild the country's image internationally".

I could hardly believe my eyes. A permanent foreign policy? It is not always that one agreed with Lakshman Kadirgamar on either foreign policy or the administration of the foreign ministry.

That is a solely different matter. But surely it is difficult to conceive of Kadirgamar, after the recent years spent in guiding the country's external policy and the experience gathered in interacting with world statesmen and appearing at international forums, coming up with such a wild idea that would forever set in concrete Sri Lanka's foreign policy.

Since I could not believe that Kadirgamar would have come up with an incredible notion, I cross checked with the newspaper reports of the former foreign minister's remarks made in parliament during the committee stage debate on the foreign ministry votes.

What Kadirgamar had reiterated was the need for a bipartisan foreign policy, not a permanent foreign policy as the Colombo Page would want us to believe.
The reporter who wrote this and the on-line sub editor who passed the copy did not seem to know the fundamental difference between a bipartisan foreign policy and a permanent policy. Such is the state of journalism today.

A bipartisan policy is one that is basically agreed to by government and opposition so that, as far as possible, there would be continuity in a country's external policy even when there is a change of government. As such other countries that we have relations with-and indeed countries we don't recognise if there are any today- know basically where Sri Lanka would stand on global or regional issues.

To confuse that with a permanent foreign policy, by which one assumes a policy set in stone, immutable and unchangeable, is to say the least a sign of ignorance.

No country however big or small can have or will have such a foreign policy. To do so is to ignore the fact that an external policy is often determined by external circumstances and objective conditions and those conditions cannot be determined by any one country.

It is true that foreign policy is the extension of domestic policy and that a country's foreign relations are meant to further its domestic interests.

But since a country cannot, especially if it was a small country such as ours, dictate the course of events regionally or globally and cannot always take measured steps proactively, a country is often called upon to be reactive to developments.

Since one is reacting to developments and events that are not of one's own making, it is rarely that a small country such as Sri Lanka has the opportunity for proactive planning of policy.

Since the peace process between the government and the LTTE is very much in the news today, let's consider a very simple case. In the past few years it has been government policy to expose to the world the activities of the Tamil Tigers, their atrocities and what have you, and present them as a dangerous terrorist organisation that should be banned by countries concerned about terrorism on their soil.

As part of that policy, government instructions to its diplomatic missions have been to counter LTTE propaganda, contradict Tiger statements when they portray the government in a bad light or propagate false or doctored news.

Now this might not always have been done efficaciously and efficiently by all our missions abroad. But that was the official policy.

But now that policy has changed. Because of the on-going peace process, it is not the policy of the government to take on the LTTE headlong on any propaganda war abroad or to pursue the policy of asking for the proscription of the LTTE in all the countries in which it operates.

The change in policy in the past couple of months is because the country's national interest has changed, that under a new government the approach to the national question has changed from that of confrontation-military and political- to one of appeasement in the long term interest.

I believe it was Lord Palmerston, foreign minister to Queen Victoria, who observed that Her Majesty's government had no permanent friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests.

Some policy makers doubtless measure permanent interests in terms of dollars and sterling pounds. Otherwise it would be difficult to understand how Sri Lanka supported Britain at the United Nations on the Falklands War. The Falkland Islands, as readers will recall, was a virtually forgotten outpost of the British empire in the South Atlantic which had more sheep on it than people.

When Britain went to war with Argentina over the disputed islands in 1982, Sri Lanka voted with Britain and Oman against the vast majority at the UN, sharply breaking ranks with the rest of the Non-Aligned nations and the non-aligned policy we were said to be following at the time.

Why? Because the J.R.Jayewardene government at the time considered national self interest. Britain was financing part of the Mahaweli Ganga diversion project and thought it necessary to support Britain in order to ensure aid. Now that we are on the subject of the Falklands War, its aftermath had an impact thousands of miles away from the theatre of that military confrontation.

Fresh from her military triumph over Argentina, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited Beijing. Although the British lease over Hong Kong was coming to an end in mid-1997, some 15 years later, its future had still not been settled between Britain and China.

Thatcher's new found triumphalism got the better of her during talks with China's patriarch Deng Xiaoping. Her arrogance annoyed Deng so much that he said quite clearly that China will not barter away its sovereignty and a settlement that might have still allowed Britain some kind of presence in Hong Kong ended there and then.

Observers of the foreign scene no doubt see how foreign policies of nations big and small have changed in the past two decades. The implosion of the Soviet Union and the official end to the Cold War have forced nations to rethink their foreign policies and question the validity of principles such as non-alignment which had formed the bedrock of their external relations.

The objective conditions had changed and East-West confrontation and the worldview arising from this clash had undergone radical change. Nations had to adopt to this change and it was happening everywhere.

Unfortunately the implications of these changes and where the world is heading or should be heading, seem to have ceased to interest some of those who today parade as journalists.

Journalism today centres round reporting and writing about domestic politics. This has not only become the centre of our concerns, it is an excuse to hang on to the shirt tails of politicians.

In years gone by we had institutes such as the Institute of World Affairs and other organisations that regularly discussed international developments and major global questions.

But foreign policy and international issues have gone off the radar screen altogether. The media is hardly interested in it. Some of the new comers to the profession seem more interested in fashion, style and pop music than serious questions that should occupy minds of journalists so that they can perform the public duty that is a part of the obligations of the media. Informing and entertaining are not its only responsibilities. It must educate too, a duty that is often forgotten in today's media world. Alas foreign policy is as an alien to today's young journalists as the man from Mars.

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