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Anandasangaree defies step-down call, vows to fight
By Shelani Perera
With a section of the TULF echoing the LTTE demand that TULF President V Anandasangaree stepdown, the party's policy making politburo is scheduled to meet next week to decide the fate of its leader.

Mr. Anandasangaree, who advocates a TULF policy independent of the LTTE, has said in a letter sent to party members that he will step down only if the party found him guilty of any charge levelled at him.

Mr. Anandasangaree told The Sunday Times the party could remove him only on two grounds. "It will be upon my death or if the party passes a no-confidence motion against me. Until that I will not step down," Mr. Anandasangaree said.

The LTTE leadership at a May 22 meeting with TULF leaders in Kilinochchi asked them to remove Mr. Anandasangaree from the post of president. The Sunday Times learns that of the five TULF members who attended this meeting, three had approached Mr. Anandasangaree to urge him to step down or tone down his views on the LTTE.

Mr. Anandasangaree has expressed disappointment over the failure of some of his party men to defend him and defy the LTTE demand. A senior TULF member who did not want to be named told The Sunday Times the party would convene a special politburo meeting once its secretary R Sampandan returned from India.
"The meeting will be held to discuss Mr. Anandasangaree's letter to party members," he said.

Despite mounting pressure from the LTTE, Mr. Anandasangaree, who had not attended any of the TULF-LTTE meetings, has stood his ground, vowing in a hard-hitting letter to TULF members that he would step down only if the party could prove the allegations levelled at him.

Lapse at airport by immigration officer being investigated
An airport immigration officer who checked the passport of a woman accompanying a Colombo municipal councillor on a foreign tour has been transferred to the main office, pending a full probe, Immigration Controller Mervyn Wijesekera said.
He said he had called for a full report on the failure of the officer to detect the passport forgery when the couple was leaving Colombo.

"The forgery was visible to the naked eye. To prevent any forgery, we print the photograph on the relevant page of the passport, but in this case, the photograph of the woman had been pasted on top of the original picture. We are investigating as to how the Immigration officer failed to make the detection," Mr. Wijesekera said.

Meanwhile, CID sources said they were investigating whether MMC Roy Bogahawatte, who along with his female companion was arrested in Colombo after the forgery was detected in Dubai, had been involved in a human smuggling racket. The MMC and the woman who posed off as his secretary were on their way to Switzerland when they were arrested in Dubai and deported.

Formulate laws considering cultural traditions, says Prof. Weeramantry
“The richness and uniqueness of our cultural traditions which have the capabilities of injecting new perspectives into international laws should be taken into consideration at a time when international laws are beginning to come under increasing criticism," Prof. C.G. Weeramantry, Former Vice President of the International Court of Justice said at the first in the series of SAARC LAW Orations on Friday in Colombo.

Speaking about the importance of multicultural perspectives in international laws, Prof. Weeramantry said that international laws have grown up largely as a mono-cultural system cast in a euro-centric mould. For the last 400 years, international laws have been formulated exclusively by European scholars based on European concepts and procedures.

According to him, lawyers of the SAARC region should provide the inspiration which this international body "so desperately needs". Prof. Weeramantry also spoke on the importance of environmental laws, the involvement of the media, globalization and the interpretation of international laws by religious groups.

Prof. A.T. Anghie, Professor of Law at S.J. Quinney School of Law, University of Utah, spoke on international laws and the developing world and some of its problems and perspectives.

According to him, international laws affect every aspect of our lives and many issues that were heard by domestics courts are now been heard in international tribunals.

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