Participating in a Asia Pacific security conference in Honolulu, Hawaii Moragoda urged the United States to take on the leadership of the world and lead us all into the promised land of democracy, market economics and peace.

This troika of values, says Moragoda, is precisely what the US constitution seeks to protect and so we should all get together and hand over the baton to Washington so that it can teach even recalcitrant nations and leaders to dance to the strains of the stars and stripe.

In short, Moragoda urges the US to be the world hegemon.

At the earlier writing I had only read a brief report of Moragoda's panacea for world terrorism and violence and was not privy to the full text.

I had, of course, previously read another discourse by Milinda Moragoda. In that he states that Sri Lanka should be to India what Hong Kong is to China.

Anybody who has any understanding of the special symbiotic relationship between Hong Kong and China could hardly conceive of a similar relationship between the two South Asian neighbours. Moreover history seems to have passed Moragoda by, for Hong Kong has been an integral part of China for the past five years and so different from India and Sri Lanka, two independent states with their own strengths and imperatives.

When he was here in London a couple of months back I tried to meet him on this very issue and indicated my interest officially. But, like history, he passed by and the opportunity was lost.

Appropos the Hawaiian hula hula, if I did let Moragoda down gently, as Abeynayake believes, it was because I preferred to read his full speech before further comment. In any case his motives did not overly concern me, just his thoughts.

Even before Moragoda's exhortation to all and sundry to read him in full, I had obtained not only a copy of the Honolulu Homily but also of the Lalith Athulathmudali Memorial Lecture given more recently, both of which make interesting reading.

I once read somewhere that Minister Moragoda, speaking to students of the Eastern Province University, had said that colleagues considered him funny.

"My colleagues think I am funny because I don't think of only one side. I think of both sides of an issue," he was quoted as saying.

At the time I could not quite imagine what was so funny about that. It seemed only that he had funny colleagues.

But now having read these two speeches, I understand what Moragoda means. He is not funny ha ha, he is funny curious.

Moragoda claims that "we" look to the US where the high principles enshrined in its constitution "continue to shine forth as a beacon to the rest of the world" and even quotes Margaret Thatcher in support.

The constitution is replete with laudable intentions and objectives written in fine words. But does he seriously believe that a constitution represents the reality of daily life?

While Moragoda was extolling the virtues of the US constitution and all those high principles such as the inalienable rights of the people, did he not think of asking the Hawaiian people (not the people of Hawaii), if any of them are still left, how their inalienable rights were safeguarded? Did Moragoda, the economic reformer, even try to find out about land ownership in Hawaii and who owns and runs big enterprises? How many persons of Polynesian origin still own the large acres of land their forefathers once cultivated and grazed their flocks? Not one surely for they have all been dispossessed by whites from mainland America.

And what happened to the native Indians of America who were not only robbed of the land but also of their heritage. What of the blacks brought into the country as slaves, were sold as slaves and died as slaves? "All men are created equal", says the US constitution at which Moragoda is constantly burning incense. Indeed, except that some are more equal than others.

Can Minister Moragoda be so naive as to accept constitutions at their face value. The Soviet constitution then and the Chinese constitution even today promises several of the rights and freedoms that are enshrined in the United Nations Charter and other international treaties. So do the constitutions of several other countries. Yet we know that basic freedoms such a political rights, right to free expression and association and women's rights were, and are not, respected and practised even today.

Minister Moragoda ends his peroration by asking whether, if the US truly accepts world leadership for "which its achievements unquestionably qualify it", and if it treats its partners with respect and the restraint that the powerful should show the less strong, then not only will the world be a safe place, but foreigners will be following Americans home like the rats ran after the Pied Piper.

The most overt form of such an initiative,according to Moragoda, "is the proactive fostering of democracy worldwide and the encouragement of free enterprise and trade with the aim of promoting economic development and raising the living standard of the peoples, all as the foundation of peace and security". So has Moragoda convinced George W. Bush enough for him to start with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait?

But Moragoda carefully avoids any mention of rectifying the grave injustices the US and its western imperialist partners have caused to millions of people on this earth. Nor does he mention inhuman and imperialistic policies that the US and the West are still pursuing with the intention of subjugating countries and eliminating leaders they don't approve of in the hope tightening the western stranglehold on the natural resources, principally oil.

Moragoda wants the US to foster democracy, blithely ignoring Washington's well known history of overthrowing democratically-elected leaders- from Mohamed Mossadeq in Iran to Salvador Allende in Chile, of fostering dictators and puppet regimes from Dinh Diem of Vietnam, Pinochet of Chile, Noriega of Panama, Marcos of the Philippines, several military dictators of South Korea, Suharto of Indonesia, the Shah of Iran and, of course, Saddam Hussein of Iraq who is now a "bad guy". Should one not also mention Osama bin Laden, once hailed by the CIA as a freedom fighter.

Washington's manipulation of trade, its control and use of international institutions such as the IMF and World Bank and its readiness to scuttle international treaties whether on arms control or on environment are widely known except perhaps to the Minister for Economic Reform who has not realised the inherent danger to the developing world from his blatant salesmanship.

George W.. Bush reportedly went to Yale. What he did there is not very clear. But this much he has learnt. He picks on the weak, like Iraq and is ready to bomb it back to the stone for supposedly possessing weapons of mass destruction. But he dare not do the same to North Korea, an "evil state", which by its own admission has a nuclear weapons programme and probably chemical and biological weapons.

If he tries, he will come up with a bloody nose as the Americans learnt during the Korean War and later in Vietnam. So much for American leadership, Minister Moragoda. Don't they don't teach such things at Harvard Business School?

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