By Garvin Karunaratne, Ph.D. former Government Agent, Matara District.

Your decision to appoint a panel of experts to advise you on accountability and human rights issues in the last stages of defeating the LTTE, has met with ample criticism. The Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka, Mr Bogollegama has questioned as to why this hurry to castigate Sri Lanka when it took nine years for the United Nations to set up a probe commission to investigate BritainƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s involvement in

Iraq.(DailyMirror2/4/2010)

The timing of your statement in the face of the Sri Lankan Parliamentary Election on April 8 th 2010 is evidently to bring discredit to the Government of President Rajapaksa.

Everyone including you, the Secretary General of the United Nations has to accept that President Rajapaksa is the one and only personage in the entire world today that defeated terrorism. Other powers have failed to defeat terrorism even after using carpet bombing and bunker busters- with all available ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”weapons of mass destructionƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢.

President Rajapaksa did not carpet bomb did not use bunker busters; he used the least possible weaponry trying to save the civilian population used as a human shield by the terrorists, and your criticism is totally unfair. Your statement amounts to interfering in the domestic affairs of a sovereign country. You have actually joined hands with the USA and the UK in destabilizing Sri Lanka.

The United Nations, sad to say, is totally frightened of the

Superpowers- the USA and the UK.

It looks as if the United Nations machinery has been hijacked today towards playing the role of a Policeman, looking after the interests of the Superpowers.

You have totally forgotten the premises for what the UN was formed.. The UN Charter of 1945 spells out the aims and objectives:

To maintain international peace and security, to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.(Article 1)

It needs to be stated that President Rajapaksa has totally abided by the provisions of Article 1. The LTTE was a threat to peace and committed acts of aggression on the entire population of Sri Lanka, including the Tamils in the North and the East- the area occupied by the LTTE. Thus President Rajapaksa was actually carrying out the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations, This is a task

that should have been done by the United Nations itself. He has actually liberated the entire population of Sri lanka from the clutches of the LTTE.

In actuality you as the Secretary General should be congratulating President Rajapaksa and also reimbursing him for all the expenses incurred to rid the aggressor. Please see for yourself how unfair you have been.

There was no international dispute involved because the entire task of defeating the LTTE took place on domestic land. It was not the entire Tamil minority. It was a section of the Tamils that thought it fit to carve out a separate State. Thus there is no premise for you as the Secretary General to even think that President Rajapaksa transgressed any of the premises laid down in the Charter.

As the Secretary General of the United Nations you will be interested in countries achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015. Poverty in Sri Lanka can be overcome not by half but in full. Our President has already stated that he will overcome poverty and please be rest assured that he alone will achieve it. Once he says that something will be done it will happen.

Garvin Karunaratne, Ph.D.

Author of:How the IMF Ruined Sri Lanka and Alternate Programs of Development, Godages, 2006

Success in Development.Godages- to be released shortly.

April 6, 2010