A take out is not about an unpalatable buth packet
American televangelist Pat Robertson said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez should be ''taken out', probably making some people watching telly here in Colombo wonder whether Chavez was making a homosexual pass. From what's borrowed from American English in this country, "taking out'' means dinner …(…and generally who knows what's next?)

Unless, that is, they had heard a few analysts and TV pundits say weeks earlier that Lakshman Kadirgamar was "taken out.'' Even for a quite blunt Americanism "taking out'' made a curiously late entry into our lexicon.

It means only one thing. To be bumped off, dispatched - normally in a covert kind of way, preferably with secret service clumsiness.
But since his first statement, Pat Robertson tried to take the expression back to its literal roots. With a blush and a powdered nose, he told TV audiences that "taken out'' can mean anything. So now we know, he wanted to take out Chavez for a walk in the park. Or no no, a swim at the beach, with brunch?

Taken out my foot; we were more like knocked out by Robertson's brazenness. He brought out with two words the grossest side of prevailing American fundamentalism. By calling for the killing of a country's President in an evangelical television program, and then issuing a token apology to quell the public outrage, he showed the world the true face of American fundamentalist realpolitik.

Here in Sri Lanka, however, we were always close to that kind of display of diplomatic boorishness. After Lakshman Kadirgamar's funeral, the Norwegians who solemnly bowed before the bier and wore the soberest of funeral faces, gaily jetted their way to London, and said hi to Anton Balasingham at his country dacha.

They can always say middlemen do not observe niceties -- but yet, this was Judas done with nonchalance, as if betrayal was all in a cushy days work for these Scandinavians.

After that effortless parade of the Norwegian rectitude, it appeared they had come close to grossing out the crowd as Pat Robertson had done when he made the "taking out'' comment about Creaser Chavez.
What's the connection, one might ask? It's the in-your-face sense of fundamentalist American and American proxy values -- where not even the thin veneer of appearance for the sake of nicety is observed in international relations.

But then, a man called Mahinda Rajapakse materialized in the thick of this whirl. He used the word ''take out '' in a different implied sense. He said he wants to conduct direct talks with Velupillai Prabhakaran. The implication is stark -- it meant that he wanted to ''take out'' the Norwegians from the peace-making equation.

It's a different matter that he seems to be having the political smarts to simultaneously appease the peace lobby and please the Sinhala mainstream -- the latter which is revolted by the past and recent Norwegian behaviour. But, if he does ask Prabhakaran for a summit -- he will be making a paradigm shift in the negotiations process.

He will be going the way that Mushareff and Manmohan Singh did on the Kashmiri issue, by favouring direct engagement -- cricket diplomacy in that particular case - - in place of mediated dialogue.

It's the style from Aech to Kashmir to several other locations in the conflict map. The players are cottoning on to the idea that mediation by proxies of American fundamentalism is the worse case scenario.
The JVP will agree with that as will many moderate Sri Lankans in government, opposition, and in the realm of civil society.

The good news is that in many conflict ridden parts of the world, this new paradigm is beginning to take root -- and sworn enemies are preparing to bite the bullet and talk to each other rather than suffer the ignominy of engaging through insensitive, artless middle men such as the Norwegians.

The Norwegians are the ultimate dishonest brokers (remember the former head of SLMM who passed on Sri Lankan plans for naval interdiction of LTTE ships to the Tiger, and had to be kicked out by the President for his behaviour?). They are the ultimate proxies of American fundamentalist forces. But that is another story, even though it has been told in the Sri Lankan newspaper space before at various times.
From no-way Norway, and then protracted Norwegian mediation -- the Sri Lankan polity has come around a full circle to the realization that when it comes to conflict resolution, it should be anything but the Norwegians.

'Anything but' means direct negotiations with Prabhakaran is also on the cards - - not a totally bleak prospect, as long as Vidar Helgesen and his team are declared persona non grata in the entire process.

After the tsunami, this writer asked the Sri Lankan President at her first briefing whether she would consider a direct summit with Prabhakaran after what was the "worst natural disaster the country has witnessed in its history.''

"A summit about what?" asked the President, as if she was thinking that I suggested she has tea and biscuits with Prabhakran to discuss the price of Maldive fish in Mullathivu.

"It's about how the two sides should handle the worst natural disaster in the history of the nation'' I said, as deadpan as I possibly could. The President perked up. "I will consider that,'' she said, and the answer is on tape.

Later, Lakshman Kadirgamar mentioned to a foreign ministry official ''did so and so really ask that question?'' The poser was undoubtedly put to her, and the President is on record saying she will consider a summit.

But eventually, the goodwill that was accrued to both sides as a result of the tsunami frittered away, and after the killing of Kaushalyan it went all the way downhill. If the President and Prabhakaran met thereafter, it appeared they will do so only with pickaxes in hand.

This reduction of chances had the Norwegians getting their salmon eating busy-physiques correctly positioned. Vidar Helgesen a junior minister, started running the country again.

Its much like Dylan Perera controlling the destinies of a foreign country - - for instance, imagine that Perera gets a license for Cuban President Fidel Castro to launch a broadcasting station in Oslo meant for screaming blue murder about their friends, the Americans??

Now, Mahinda Rajapakse promises to "take out' the Norwegians. Like Chavez, he will not have to apologize for that statement either: he is only talking of process All he has to do is keep right on message - - and outmaneuver the American fundamentalist forces, who want to shape the destinies of this country -- together of course with "I like to be vilified in the papers" Uyangoda and the likes -- by shoving the American fundamentalist orthodoxies of global realpolitik down our throat.

Three cheers then in this context, to the fact that UN envoy Laktha Brahimi is here, in a first bid to make an initiative towards getting the Norwegians firmly taken out of this peace equation.

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