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Minister urges foreign pressure on Tigers
By P. Michaud The Sunday Times correspondent in Paris
Sri Lanka, obviously perturbed by the way in which the recent tsunami has brought worldwide attention to the LTTE in Europe and especially in France, traditionally close to Sri Lanka's Tamil population and for many years the haven of leading LTTE members - has taken to the pages of a major French national daily Le Figaro to demand that the international community "place pressure on the rebellion."

Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva says in an interview in the French national daily, close to President Jacques Chirac and the ruling UMP (Union pour une majorite populaire), that complaints by the Tamil population in LTTE-controlled areas, notably the north and east, that it has not received as much financial support as the Sinhalese living on the southwest coast, "are nothing but gross propaganda by the LTTE," that the claims - much relayed since Dec. 26, 2004, in the French and European press - are "totally erroneous."

"The government has been occupying itself with as much the north and the east as the south of the country. I've even been criticized by populations on the southern coast dominated by the Sinhalese, who judge that as far as they're concerned, we've done more for the territories where the Tigers rule as masters," he claims.

These Sinhalese populations, he says, "stress that the five Italian-donated hospitals have been implanted on the nothern and eastern coasts of the country," i.e., those theoretically dominated by the Tamils and supposedly governed by the LTTE.

"I'd like to add that we've sent into the sensitive zones young Sinhalese medical students, while students from Jaffna, completely taken up by the LTTE cause, haven't rushed to bring aid to the distressed populations in the zones administered by the Tigers."

Asked whether the joint mechanism to coordinate aid to be signed shortly between the LTTE and the government is expected to appease the "quarrels," all that Minister de Silva would say was that "this mechanism should not make us forget that Sri Lanka is governed by a single government and that it's through this government that the aid is to be funnelled."

An important declaration, at least as interpreted by French policymakers keen on bringing about a resolution of the long war, which has seen France and the EU accord asylum to tens of thousands of Tamil political refugees, "the tsunami represents a veritable opportunity to bring closer the positions of the two parties," he says.

"The mechanism of coordination," he continues, "is an important element, which goes in the direction of negotiations. President Chandrika Kumaratunga has said it, and has repeated it, that Colombo is favourable to a decentralization of power and the creation of a veritable federalism. But the Tigers continue to engage in trickery. Which is why the international community must apply pressure on the LTTE so that it accepts the hand held out by the government."

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