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Tokyo aid summit on schedule
With only two weeks to go for the aid donors meeting in Tokyo, the UNF government is making a frantic bid to persuade the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to take part.

The government will respond in the next two days to the LTTE's demands, Bernard Goonetillake, Secretary General of the Secretariat Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) said yesterday. He declined to elaborate on the government's response.

Rejecting three specific proposals made by the government, the LTTE has demanded an "interim administrative structure with greater participation of the LTTE in both decision making and delivery of the tasks of rebuilding war-damaged economy and restoring normalcy".

The government had asked aid donors to identify modalities for the disbursement of their funds. The donors had, however, expressed the view that the matter had to be sorted out by the two parties. Any government concessions would have to be within Sri Lanka's Constitution. Already President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga has dubbed the LTTE demand as asking for "de facto" Eelam.

Addressing the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Sri Lanka in Colombo on Friday, the President described the LTTE's demand for an administrative structure "outside the constitution of Sri Lanka," as a "mad" proposition. "How dare they ask the government to go outside the constitution?" she asked.

No government, she said, could envisage giving in to such a demand. Indeed, the constitution could be amended or changed to accommodate new ideas, but no structure could be "outside the constitution".

"Would any government in the world give in to such a demand?" she asked.
The President went on to say that an Interim Administration, should not be given to a "terrorist group" without an assurance from it that it would give up terrorism and separatism and seek only a negotiated settlement.

President Kumaratunga said that she was not asking the LTTE to decommission its weapons at this stage (even the British had asked for de-commissioning at the time of the talks with the IRA in Northern Ireland).

But decommissioning should be a precondition for taking over an Interim Administration, which itself, should be given just only when a final negotiated settlement was going to be reached, she stressed Mr. Goonetillake said the proposed donor conference in Tokyo would go ahead as scheduled irrespective of the non-participation of the LTTE.

He said Japan and the US had already made it clear that the conference would go ahead and accordingly Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe will represent the country.

The US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, on Friday declared that the proposed Tokyo conference "should be held as scheduled notwithstanding the Tamil Tigers' stated position not to participate..."

Mr. Armitage said he "agrees with the government of Japan that if the conference were not held as scheduled, it would mean an irreparable loss to the long suffering people of Sri Lanka".

The Deputy Secretary of State in a statement said the conference was important for the international community to demonstrate its solid support for the peace process and its full commitment to contribute to the reconstruction and development of all regions of the country, including the north and east.…

Japan on Friday made a fresh appeal for the LTTE to attend the donor conference to be held on June 9 and 10.

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