Ranil, Press Club and the full-Montenegro?
In Washington, they will toast him in style this week. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is slotted to address the Washington Press Club about peacemaking mainly. The Prime Minister will say "blessed are the peacemakers.'' If he doesn't say it, the Washington people will say it for him.

Washington press persons may also ask him questions like this. "Prime Minister, with your peacemaking experience, what would you suggest that we Americans should do to make peace with our enemies?'' To which the Prime Minister of course, if he is fully unrehearsed and open minded about these things will say "well, of course you need to negotiate with your enemies, because that is the way that we in Sri Lanka are engaged in peacemaking.'' At which point, several things may happen. Ranil Wickremesinghe will get booed out of the room and somebody will land a cream-pie on his face. That is the in-your-face response, which everybody in the audience will want. But it is extremely unlikely to happen in reality. The other scenario is, one of those handlers of the Washington Press Club will shimmy him down the room, away from the lectern and say quietly "….Mr Prime Minister, you don't know the first thing about peace. In America we don't make peace with terrorists. We blow them apart, and all their countrymen included.''

Ranil Wickremesinghe, if he is totally daft about these things, or if he is for some reason pretending to be totally naïve and out of depth will then say "but how can I say that. In my country this is how I am making peace with those whom you called terrorists. So if I am to hand down a lesson from my country, this is the way I have to hand down the lesson. I have to say, you have to sit down with that Al Qaeda or whoever and damn well negotiate with them'' At which point the Washington Press Club might want to get Ranil Wickremesinghe to the nearest psychiatrist. But instead the President of the Club is called and he will politely tell Wickremesinghe "Prime Minister, when we say a lesson on peacemaking from Sri Lanka we don't mean a lesson of that sort. We mean a lesson as in 'one must have tenacity of purpose and an unyielding will in making peace. You know, quote Shakespeare, which we hear you are very good at - that sort of thing.' ''

So Ranil Wickremesinghe goes to the lectern and does just that. But then he gets a bright idea. He says "I want to ask all of you a question?'' To which the Washington Press Club is curious but responsive.

So the Prime Minister says " I hear that the preparations are ready for a memorial at the September 11th site, you know where the Twin Towers used to be in New York. I was told that the plans are very elaborate, and that there will be new towers and various constructions but all with a view to honouring the dead."

"That's right,'' say the men and women of the Press Club, being suitably attentive.

"My question is, don't you think it will be a good idea for Sri Lanka to construct a similar monument at our Central Bank site in Colombo, where there was an attack by the separatists, and where hundreds of people died. They were mostly bank workers and other civilians'''

At which point there is visible agitation among Washington Press Club members. The man from the NYT (New York Times) says "Mr Prime Minister, but you can't be serious. You are supposed to be making peace with your enemies, and it will be extremely counter productive to say the least, to build a monument at this stage, or for that matter, at any time in Colombo. Not to mention that your dead are quite obviously different from our dead - - your dead are collateral damage in a separatist conflict aimed at oppressive Sinhala hegemony, everybody knows that.

Even Prabhakaran told me so when I was in Killino-C-C or whatever that place is called where he had the press conference.

The World Trade Center dead in New York are civilians who were murdered by terrorists in a cold-blooded savage attack. Your other leader Prabhakaran was very emphatic when he said he condemns this attack on civilians. I think in Washington, they are fully behind your peace moves, to a man and a woman in the Bush administration, you can take it from me, a senior journalist. You might spoil all of that goodwill if you start this business of a monument……''

At which point Ranil Wickremesinghe thinks that he should have taken the advice of his people and let the press ask the questions. So he tells the Press Club "Yes, anyway peace will be the biggest monument to those people who died,'' and lets the matter rest at that. Applause, applause.
End-piece:

Rumor has had it that at times, the international community wanted a 'Serbia-Montenegro kind of resolution' to the Sri Lankan crisis via negotiations. What is this Serbia Motenegro accord? Apparently, it is an instrument by which the country of Yugoslavia became a thing of the past ( ..that is what was recently left of Tito's Yugoslavia) and became 'Serbia-Montenegro', which is one country.

However, the terms of co-existence of this one country is that after a three-year period, a member-state has the right to initiate procedures for changing state status, or leaving the common state. There are further legal ramifications, which of course are too cumbersome to go into here.

If the international community is looking towards a Serbia-Montenegro arrangement in Sri Lanka, perhaps this will be part of the substance of talks between Ranil Wickremesinghe and George Bush? Nobody knows, but this is only speculative. After all, it has been said that Ranil Wickremsinghe will unveil his plans for peace, and his plans for peace as he has himself said on so many occasions "always hinges on the support of the international community.''

Serbia Montenegro is a situation in which two ethnic communities resolved to form one country and co-exist as a state - with each being given the option, after three years of becoming "independent.'' What now appears in Sri Lanka, is that a Serbia Montenegro is already in existence, de facto in the NorthEast. It is no secret whatsoever that countries such as Norway, or such as those of the European Union, are in favour of a Serbia - Montenegro 'solution' in Sri Lanka.

Whether the Americans also back a 'Serbia Motenegro' here is another matter. But certainly, the Americans want to get tough on terrorism because America is plainly in that kind of mood after September 11th. So basically America is telling the LTTE - agree to a Serbia Motenegro, or to anything - anything short of your having to resort to terrorism. So it appears that nobody is really bothered in the international community about the Balkanization/fragmentation of Sri Lanka. In Pakistan, apparently, the prayer among the zealots is that "India should break up into a thousand pieces.'' If this is what some Pakistanis want to do with the successfully Indian state (despite all its shortcomings India has politically been tremendously successful in being one country) - the international community does not seem to see much of a problem is the rest of the world breaking up into a thousand pieces. But, incidentally, the European Union will come together, and several countries will become one powerful union, or at least that's the ideal. While we do the full Montenegro, the rich and the powerful nations coalesce and keep coming together all the time. Perhaps this is what Wickremesinghe and Bush will talk about?

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