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LTTE feels left out now, says Kadir
By Rajpal Abeynayake in Washington D.C
The LTTE walked out of the peace talks and is now feeling left out of the whole process, said Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar addressing the Sri Lanka Working Group of the United States Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

The Minister said the ostensible reason for the LTTE walking out of the talks was that they were not invited for the Washington Aid Group meeting in 2003. But the LTTE knew very well this was not possible, it being a banned organization in the US.

"Therefore,'' he said, "it is very clear that they walked out for a different reason - - the fact that they felt they were in a peace trap from their own point of view.''

They felt that the Sri Lankan government was using international pressure on the LTTE, to keep the peace process on the boil thereby attracting huge sums of foreign aid for itself.

But having walked out of the talks, the LTTE is feeling tremendously left out now with the new government in power and with no aid forthcoming for development in the North and the East due to there being no progress in the peace process. This, he said has brought them back in the direction of the negotiating table.

However, he said that it was a good thing there were no preliminaries to the talks that are about to begin. There is nothing to discuss by way of preparations and no talks about talks, he said "about everything including the size of the table.''

The LTTE' strategy he said was to attract huge amounts of money for the development of the North East, but without the supervision of the donor governments. Its message to the international community was "we want your money we don't want you.'' They wanted absolutely no accountability and transparency, he said, but having now realized that the international community is not playing along, they feel tremendously left out and want to re-start the peace process.

"There is no war lobby in Sri Lanka -- there is in some countries,'' he added, saying "the no war situation in the country will continue.'' This he said will be a factor in attracting investment, and the US Chamber of Commerce should be assured that ''we will send the best signals we can to the international business community.'' Help us take these signals to Hong Kong, London and New York, he urged, adding that US business is very welcome in Sri Lanka despite some misconceptions that there is antipathy towards American business interests in his country.

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