Thoughts from London

EU wipes off egg from the Nordic nanny
That was quite something. Two weeks ago the European Union rubbed egg on the collective face of the LTTE with a declaration that was unusually tough. The 25-nation union, of course, left the door partially ajar for a quick getaway if changed circumstances, such as the presidential election in Sri Lanka, warranted it.

All the same, some of the EU’s actions were the consequences of the LTTE’s own stubbornness, fortified by the belief that anything it says or does will pass muster with the international community because of the diplomatic cover provided by its Nordic nanny, Norway.

The fact is that when you batter the LTTE, some of that is going to rub off Norway. That is inevitable because of the widely held perception of the partial, and often clandestine, role it has played in the Sri Lanka conflict. Even before Norway emerged as facilitator of the long-stalled peace process, Norway and its NGOs have been involved in activities in the north that were suspect at the time, suspicions that have subsequently proved true.

Having failed to stop the EU’s condemnation of the LTTE for its continuing terrorism and violence, Oslo has obviously gone bleating to the British, now holding the EU presidency, to try and save its face.

Why? Well, sections of the Sri Lanka media have called the EU declaration a defeat for the Norwegian government. There is some point in this. Norway’s newly-elected government had little or nothing to do with the tainted behaviour of Oslo as a facilitator. This was all the work of the outgoing administration of which Foreign Minister Jan Petersen and his deputy Vidar Helgesen appeared as the main architects of the pro-LTTE policy.

Naturally, a government just assuming power would not wish to be branded with the excesses of its predecessor. This is not to say that the new government will not follow the same or a similar policy, since the new administration will have within its ranks Eric Solheim, the original mover and shaker that brought light into the eyes of the LTTE.

While the new government would, at least for the moment, wish to distance itself from what has gone before, one would be hard put to deny the nexus between the LTTE, on the one hand, and Norway and the Oslo-funded NGOs, both foreign and local, on the other. Since some of the egg has naturally stuck on Oslo, Britain probably pushed by some Nordic EU members, has tried to wipe some of it off with a statement granting Norway absolution.

But it is a curiously-written statement. The British High Commission in Colombo that issued the statement on behalf of the EU said: “The European Union Declaration of 26 September on Sri Lanka has attracted a great deal of media attention in Sri Lanka.”

Surely if the statement was on Sri Lanka and on subjects of such import to Sri Lanka as terrorism and sanctions against the perpetrators, recruitment of child soldiers, fund raising and propaganda, it would be a puerile press and an incompetent media if they did not pay “a great deal” of attention.

If the Sri Lankan media did not pay the kind of attention they did, who does the EU president think should have done so? The British media?
Strange are the ways of the British media. They write volumes about terrorism and pontificate till the eardrums hurt on how to fight it.

Yet when Britain as the EU president issues a declaration that has significance for the UK and Europe, the British media wrapped up in thier own self importance and self-flagellation are unable to see the wood for the trees.

Meanwhile, what did the EU member states in Colombo expect having issued a declaration on Sri Lanka that the LTTE calls unfair and one-sided and imperils the peace process — its regular choric mantram?
If the EU wishes to criticise some Colombo media for their reading of the declaration, it is understandable though not necessarily justifiable. To make such asinine remarks that suggest surprise at the media attention its declaration generated is to make the hasty, face-saving attempts look even sillier.

The EU says some of the reporting was “false and highly misleading” but diplomatically avoids saying which, obviously to avoid antagonising the media. The EU is entitled to its opinion of course. But so is the Sri Lanka media, particularly since sufficient evidence has accumulated of Norway’s duplicity whereby it has actually forfeited its right to a role as facilitator.

There is no need here to repeat all the evidence that has been made public by the media and at several forums including some in Norway itself. The supply of some six tons of radio and satellite communication equipment that, apart from allowing the LTTE to carry its propaganda message abroad, has allowed it to track and kill political opponents, the telephone intercepts of conversations between the Norwegian ambassador in Colombo and the LTTE and the monetary promises made, the passing of vital information by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission to the LTTE which made it possible for an LTTE arms ship to evade navy interception and many covert operations, have been well documented.

Not all of this has been explained or denied. But one story that has failed to evoke even a murmur out of Oslo is the charge made in the Asian Tribune that some days before the December tsunami, Norwegian diplomats had spirited LTTE leader Prabhakaran out of Sri Lanka and taken him via the Maldives to Norway where he was warmly greeted on arrival.
That is a serious charge because it violated both Sri Lanka’s domestic law and international law particularly as the LTTE leader is wanted by Interpol. One would have expected a prompt denial.

Yet not one word has emanated from Oslo or its embassy in Colombo as far as I know, dismissing this. When countries and organisations such as the EU are quick to issue statements of denial or clarification, it does strike one as terribly odd that Oslo has maintained a deafening silence.
So would it be unjustified if the media and the public take this charge as fact and not fiction?

Such deceitful or unexplained behaviour provide the backdrop to Norway’s role as a facilitator, not of the so-called peace process but of the LTTE’s rise to free domestic mobility in areas in which it could not operate freely before and to international interaction.

More recently Norway has striven hard to explain away the violent conduct of the LTTE that the international community has found abhorrent. It has lobbied diplomatically to halt any punitive action on the basis this would jeopardise the peace process. What peace process, pray? That process came to a sudden halt well over two years ago after the LTTE pulled out when it was not invited to the Washington confab.

The EU tries a whitewash saying that the September 19 statement by the Co-Chairs specifically backed Norway’s role as facilitator. They had to didn’t, they if they wanted Norway’s signature on the joint statement.

Clearly to appease Oslo, the statement deplored the activities of “paramilitary groups” (on that on another occasion) and offered bouquets to Petersen and Helgesen. That was the quid pro quo for blaming the LTTE (if you read the statement perceptively enough) for the Kadirgamar killing and other heinous acts. The EU’s whitewash does not wash, really.

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