Two-member delegation of the Amnesty International is currently touring Jaffna to obtain a first-hand account on the situation there, a Tamil political party source said.
The team consisting of the Asian Pacific Programme Head of the AI, Ms. Ingrid Mashage and S. David, a lawyer by profession, met Tamil political party representatives to collect details about the situation in the north before leaving for Jaffna.
The AI which has been critical about the action by the security forces and the LTTE had been appealing to the government for permission to visit the north since January last year.
During a proposed week-long stay in Jaffna they hope to meet government officials, civilians, citizen committee representatives, clergy including the Bishop of Jaffna and academics.
On Friday, they met media representatives in Jaffna and discussed the current situation and about the allegation of human rights violations, both by the security forces and the LTTE.
The team is being assisted by the Western Provincial Governor's Additional Secretary, M.C.M. Iqbal who earlier assisted in the commission appointed to look into disappearances.
Human rights activists have alleged that over 750 persons have been reported missing since the army regained control of the Jaffna peninsula.
On their return to Colombo the AI team is due to meet government representatives as well.
In the wake of Speaker K.B. Ratnayake's report last week regarding some members disrespecting the House of Parliament by bringing their cellular telephones which disturbed proceedings, a fresh warning is to be issued to the members through their respective party leaders.
When Parliament was in session last week, Galle District PA Parliamentarian Nanda Gunasinghe's cellular began to ring, thus disturbing the proceedings and drawing a howl of protests from UNP's Gamini Jayawickrema Perera who claimed that there was no discipline in the Parliament anymore.
The Speaker warned the House severely that hereafter he would proceed to confiscate such telephones which start ringing inside Parliament. He has made several requests to the members to stop this "ugly practice" in order to maintain order in the House.
According to the Standing Orders of Parliament, the Speaker is vested with immense powers, including sending MPs to jail, confiscate their personal belongings and to name members.
He has exclusive powers to take action against any verbal or physical action that affects order in the House and is empowered to take cognizance of all matters regarding Parliament and his ruling is the ultimate authority.
Luxury buses of peoplised depots will feel the feminine touch when women are recruited to charm the elite of Colombo to travel in them. Transport Minister A.H.M. Fowzie spelt out this 'mantra' in time for the buses when they roll along the roads in September. For a start 10 luxury buses will be launched, increasing the number to 200 if successful.
Meanwhile a large number of applications have poured in all wanting to be woman conductors.
A million rupee deal in supplying sugar and rice as relief supplies for Jaffna through the Commissioner General of Essential Services is being questioned as the normal tender procedures are said to have been ignored in the deal.
The Sunday Times learns that a contract had been given to a Pettah wholesale dealer to supply 500 mt. sugar at the rate of Rs. 31,450 per metric ton which amounts to Rs. 31.45 per kilogram.
However the present prices of sugar in the wholesale market is around Rs. 26 per kilogram. The rice supplies also have been questioned as a contract to supply 700 metric tons of rice had been given without a proper tender.
The contracts had been given by a senior official of the Commissioner General of Essential Services to the dealer, it is alleged.
The government is said to have lost millions of rupees due to the failure to follow proper tender procedures by executing the deal which had taken place three months back.
Chithru, an art exhibition organised by the United Nations Youth Associations of Bishop's College, Royal College, Mahanama College and Devi Balika Vidyalaya will be held at the Bishop's College Auditorium on August 22 and 23, 1997 from 9 am onwards.
The recent conference hosted by International Alert held in Luzerne, Switzerland on July 28-30, promoted speculation that this was an attempt to revive the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987. This speculation was based on the fact that some of the conference participants would include Indians who were involved in the Indo-Lanka Accord and had previously held key positions. Also the conference was held exactly on the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Accord. However the outcome of the conference made clear that there was no concerted effort to revive the Indo-Lanka Accord or to make it a model for future peace making efforts.
However some of the Indian participants were very assertive in saying that upto date including the present power sharing package, no better solution to Sri Lanka's ethnic crisis has been put forward other than the Indo-Lanka Accord.
The aim of the conference was to bring together thinkers and decision makers from all sides who had participated in the various attempts to negotiate a peace settlement in Sri Lanka, record their experiences, seek their insights, and explore the strengths and weaknesses of each process. It was felt that a study of past peace processes, using the experience of many of those who had been involved in them, would be invaluable towards making the next attempt at peace a success. This conference marked the first real attempt to study all the various peace processes as part of a continuum. From this it was hoped that patterns would emerge that negotiators in future attempts would find useful.
Sri Lankan participants to the conference commented the Indian participants were extremely focused and disciplined in their approach and that they took the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi very seriously unlike Sri Lankans who are willing to put behind the assassination of their own leaders. Participants expressed the view that the Indian delegation made a concerted constitution at the conference.
A possible reason for this was that the Indians all came from a similar background of high policy makers who sought to implement the Indo-Lanka Accord. While the Sri Lanka participants including the Tamil expatriates came from extremely diverse backgrounds where no two people came from the same camp. This was why the Sri Lankans could not put up a united front. Opinions on the part of the Sri Lanka delegation was fragmented maintaining however strong positions that did not fall.
Nevertheless, a very strong consensus emerged that whatever different positions people had come with and continued to hold that they would do everything possible to promote the process set off by the Luzerne conference.
The Lucerne conference not only looked at the Accord but it also used that event to look further back and forward at all attempts at negotiating a settlement to the ethnic question and the war. The G. Parathasarathy mission of 1984 was discussed as was the Chandrika-LTTE negotiations of 1995 to the Premadasa-LTTE talks of 1990. The conference itself was correctly described by some of the more senior participants as unique. They asserted that the conference brought together those who had been players in some capacity or other, observers, participants of some sort or another at various stages of the protracted Sri Lankan conflict. The event was unique also in its representative composition bring together Indians, Sri Lankan Sinhalese, Sri Lankan Tamils including those belonging to the Tamil Diaspora. The presence of M.K. Narayanan possibly the senior most and experienced Indian intelligence official alive today (albeit recently retired) was quite an achievement, participants said.
The Indian team was diverse in the political orientations affiliations of its individual members. However it was a very strong senior and articulate team with a very clear consensual bottom line, namely that they take the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by the LTTE as a matter of utmost seriousness.
It is not a question of intervention in Sri Lankan affairs but is seen as an intervention by the LTTE in general and Prabhakaran in particular in India's internal affairs in that it was the assassination of a former Indian Prime Minister. The Indian contingent repeatedly emphasized that a legal process had identified Prabhakaran as accused No. 1 in a case and that this fact would not be wished away.
Participants reiterated further that the most significant feature of the conference is that despite a frank thoroughgoing and at terms even furious debate on a matter such as the LTTE and the Accord, personal relations between the participants were never strained to the point of rupture. Individual animosities were never present.
They added there was a clear distinction or division of opinion at the conference which was registered and recorded concerning the nature of the LTTE. While some felt that the Tigers were an extremist and militarist organization which would never genuinely settle for less than that of an independent Tamil Eelam others felt that the Tigers were a maturing and evolving organization, specially since 1982 and may well accept a confederal or fully federal set-up that fell short of an independent Eelam.
Almost all the Indian participants and some of the Sri Lankans were of the first of these two views while most of the Tamil participants and some of the Sri Lankan Sinhalese participants upheld the second opinion.
The participants recognized that the ethnic problem is capable of resolution only through a negotiated political settlement.
As the bus strike came to an end on Friday evening, Transport Minister A.H.M Fowzie gave orders to the Railway Chief not to allow a certain troublesome category of technicians to enter work sites, fearing sabotage.
Following a work-to-rule action by a group of technicians at the Sri Lanka Railways, Minister Fowzie has ordered that these trade unionists should not be allowed for work but sign their registers and collect their salaries at the end of the month.
Mr. Fowzie said that the decision had been taken on the advice of the railway security.
Railway trade unionists who demanded that they be given an enhanced incentive, and raise their designation from technicians to technologists went on a lightning work-to-rule action on Friday in the midst of discussions with the transport minister.
Mr. Fowzie told 'The Sunday Times" that he had explained matters to trade unionists and that he would seek a solution at cabinet level to their problem, "But the technicians were not prepared to wait; so I had to order them not to report to their worksites," the minister said.
Sources said that these technicians who are responsible to repair at least six locomotives a month were starved of work as the fleet of locomotives available with the SLR is relatively low. However it is learnt that the technicians are to file a fundamental rights case against the government if they are not allowed to work.
Mr. Fowzie in a counter reply said that it is not possible to file a fundamental rights case as the technicians will not be deprived of their salaries.
Meanwhile the Peoplised Bus Depot strikers returned to work, following a week long strike.
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