The visiting Sri Lankan President had to cancel his scheduled visit to Chennai following the CM's last minute decision not to receive the Sinhala leader.
NEW DELHI: It’s a major embarrassment for the government that visiting Sri Lankan President Mahindra Rajapakse had to cancel his scheduled visit to Chennai following chief minister Jayalalithaa’s last minute decision not to receive the Sinhala leader.
The foreign ministry naturally tried to downplay the incident, saying the programme was tentative. But highly placed sources in the government maintains the Tamil Nadu chief minister had agreed and then changed her mind at the last minute.
Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict has in the past often impinged on Tamil Nadu politics, and this time around Jayalaithaa’s refusal to meet with President Rajapakse is believed to be linked with the assembly elections in the state in April next year.
The AAIDMK leader would not like to be seen entertaining a hard line Sinhala President, who had based his election campaign on preserving the unitary constitution of the island nation. All Tamils, including those against the LTTE as well as the moderate political parties want devolution of power to the Tamil areas and are not in favour of the unitary constitution.
Jayalalithaa has in the past taken a tough stand against the LTTE. Her refusal to meet Rajapakse has little to do with the LTTE, and more to do with his image as a pro-Sinhala Buddhist leader, popular with the chauvinist Buddhist clergy.
He fought the presidential elections with the help of the radical Janatha Vimukthi Perumuna (JVP), a party vehemently opposed to devolution of power to Tamil areas. With elections in Tamil Nadu just over four months away, Jayalalithaa does not want to take the risk of meeting Rajapakse.
The President was to stop over and meet Jayalaithaa on his way home to Colombo on Saturday. Rajapakse is unfamiliar to the Indian establishment and his first visit abroad since taking office is naturally to New Delhi, where he wants to convince Indian leaders that he is not a unpredictable hardliner but a man of peace.
Earlier on Wednesday, President Rajapakse was given a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, from where he went to Raj Ghat to lay a wreath in the Samadhi of Mahatma Gandhi. During official talks in Hyderabad House with PM Singh, the Sri Lankan leader gave his assessment of the current situation in the island, which has seen an escalation in violence in the last fortnight. On Tuesday, the LTTE again attacked an army unit and killed six Lankan soldiers.
Later he had a forty-minute one on one with Singh. Details of that meeting are not known. But Rajapakse would have certainly tried to persuade Singh of the necessity for Indian involvement in the peace talks in Sri Lanka.
Colombo is unhappy with the Norwegians believing that despite their good intentions, they are unable to understand the complexities of the ethnic strife in the island. India of course is in no mood to be directly involved having burnt its fingers once.
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