20th October 1996

The Jungle Telegraph

By Alia


Surprise call to Kadir

Opposition leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe, despite a busy schedule during his visit to UK found time to make a telephone call to his parliamentary colleague, Foreign Minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar.

The latter who was in New York to attend the UN General Assembly sessions stopped over in London en route to Colombo.

Mr. Wickremesinghe took the occasion to congratulate him and wish him many years of happy married life.

Mr. Kadirgamar and his charming young lady, Suganthi were delighted.

Stars and grips

A star struck, crusading young lady, a friend of my colleague authoring the next column (I mean the Situation Report) was infuriated at some of the errors that had crept in last week in The Jungle Telegraph.

It was all about the two Majors General - Janaka Perera and Neil Dias - leaving next year for Defence Colleges in UK and India. She says they are not four star generals but more two and adds that Major General Gemunu Kulatunga retired as Deputy Chief of Staff and not as Adjutant General. She sure knows the seniority list by heart.

There is more news on that now. The National Defence College in New Delhi has offered two positions to Sri Lanka.

This time both nominees are to be from the Sri Lanka Army.

Yours or mine?

Here is a gem from an LTTE press release put out by its London office:

"Thousands of anti-personnel land-mines lie buried in Jaffna soil, causing injury and death to local Tamil people. The army which carried out military operations to force the people back to Jaffna never made any real effort to clear the land- mines. On the contrary the army intends the land-mines to be dissipated by explosion - an utterly inhumane method of destroying land-mines.

"The agricultural areas of the Valigamam are perilous due to existing land-mines. The military attitude is to ignore the danger of civilian life".

Who planted the land-mines?

It's like Pol Pot saying that the land mines in Cambodia were planted by the Phnom Penh Government.

Fishy move

The adage goes that diplomats lie for their country. Many other service chiefs who are retired have assumed diplomatic status (not implying that they are liars).

Perhaps lesser ranking officers aspiring for those dizzy heights are practising the art of terminological inexactitude not necessarily lying for the country.

He who until November 1 speaks for the Army recently briefing Defence Attaches of Colombo-based diplomatic missions on aims and objectives of "Operation Sath Jaya Three" declared that the intention was NOT to capture Kilinochchi.

Bhup, Goebbels diplomat or what? From November he can sing with the fish.


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