Oslo conspiracy, blighted Britons and goebbelsian spin

By Neville de Silva

It took Norwegians themselves to expose the insidious manoeuvrings of their government in promoting terrorism under cover of bringing peace to a troubled land.

In the guise of a dispassionate facilitator, Norway has tried to legitimise the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamil speaking people and acquire for it the maximum political space which Oslo would be able to exploit later.

To do this effectively it needed local support. So it was ready to spend its oil millions in buying over collaborators for the grand conspiracy.

Those who suspected decades ago the seeming altruism of Scandinavian governments and their fellow travellers in non-governmental bodies, especially Norwegian, have had to wait some time until sufficient evidence accumulated to prove them correct.

While preaching peace, humanitarian concerns and respect for international law the Norwegians like some other European governments, have themselves been breaching those high principles they have dangled before us as exemplars of righteous conduct.

There were those who believed and publicly stated that the Norwegian approach to peace in Sri Lanka was flawed. Several times this column has pointed to Oslo's failed attempts in the Middle East and in Africa and that it was not only repeating those errors in our country but also bringing into it a partisan approach that became increasingly evident.

Now this Norwegian peace facilitation has been debunked by Professor Johann Galtung, the founder of the Oslo-based Norwegian Peace Research Institute and an internationally-respected figure in the field of peace studies.

Speaking in Colombo the other day Prof Galtung reportedly described the Norwegian peace initiative as a failure and that this was pre-ordained because of the manner in which it had set about doing so.

According to news reports, Prof Galtung had cited as the main weakness Oslo's resolve to work with only two parties -- the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE -- to the exclusion of other groups that had a substantial stake in the issue.

Unfortunately, the media did not immediately report Prof Galtung 'in extenso', for one could then have better followed the reasons for his conclusions.

Still, Prof Galtung's remarks underline what we had suspected before -- Oslo's bias towards the LTTE and its attempts to exclude other ethnic groups from the peace process, especially other Tamil groups which have rejected the Tiger approach to a peaceful settlement.

Just days before Prof Galtung's exposure of the Norwegian fault lines, an organisation that had been tracking the Norwegian government's underhand role in financing the LTTE and some pro-Tiger organisations along with Sri Lankan NGOs sympathetic to the Oslo agenda, published a report that has proved extremely embarrassing to the government in Oslo.

Norwegians Against Terrorism (NAT) had managed somehow to obtain from its foreign ministry a list of the recipients of Norwegian largesse. It seemed that the list of recipients -- organisations and individuals -- was inadvertently released. It was withdrawn soon after and another list that merely cited the disciplines and vocations for which official Norwegian funds were released, was substituted instead.

Why the Norwegian Government wanted to hide this disbursement from its own people and the world is surely a matter which we hope NAT and concerned Norwegians would try to elicit.

From our end what would be of public interest is who received funds from the Norwegians, how much and for what purpose. If funds were given for genuine purposes such as basic health, water supply or sanitation one would not, by and large, have any quarrel.

The problem begins when monies are given to people and organisations which the Norwegians categorise under "Conflict prevention and resolution, peace and security" and even under "Government and civil society, general."

We then enter rather murky waters, for there are legitimate concerns about foreign interference in domestic affairs through funded organisations which are suspected of following the agendas of the donors, whatever they are.

Any conscientious researcher would surely be able to document the activities of some of these local NGOs and see how closely they coincide with the thinking and beliefs of those who fund them.

It is a question of looking for the monkeys now that the organ grinder has been identified for us, courtesy NAT. One begins to wonder what the Milinda Moragoda Institute did in 2005 to deserve 8.4 million Norwegian Kroner (NK) ; Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu's Centre for Policy Alternatives 446,000 NK; Jehan Perera's National Peace Council 2.07 million (NK); Kumar Rupasinghe's Foundation for Co-existence 12 million NK: LTTE Peace Secretariat 5.676 million NK and Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation 15 million NK. Converted into US dollars these are still substantial sums.

Now I don't know whether these figures are accurate and whether these organisations received the monies against their names. NAT claims to have got them from official Norwegian sources.

"It has been proven Norway has funded the LTTE and LTTE front organisations," states the NAT and it would be difficult for the public to separate the sheep from the goats unless NGOs who have nothing to hide are willing to be open and accountable as governments should really be.

Talking of accountability and openness, how much did the British public really know about the British government's operations in Northern Ireland against IRA terrorism?

Now and then inquiries, reports and leaks reveal the dark doings of British security forces and only then do the British people become aware of the truth.

Small countries without too much clout internationally are usually at the butt end of accusations by western governments and institutions smitten by an evangelical zeal.

But these governments and their comrades-in-arms in other capitals and international institutions are often silent when violations in the western world are exposed.

Last week, the police ombudsman for Northern Ireland issued a damning report to the great embarrassment of the government. In it Nuala O'Loan charged Scotland Yard's Special Branch of protecting terrorist killers and colluding with the banned Ulster Volunteer Force in northern Belfast over a 12 year period. The police failed to stop UVF paramilitaries from committing 15 murders and protected loyalist informants.

It seems that western preachers ignore the excrement in their own backyards when they accuse Sri Lankan security forces of colluding with the Karuna group in the east.

The charges might well be true. But there is that old saying about the mote in one's eye. That report is far more embarrassing than the strictures made by Allan Rock and Human Rights Watch about collusion between sections of our armed forces and the Karuna rebels.

If the Norwegians and British have tried to hide serious issues from their public, the Germans have resorted to diversionary tactics to explain away the suspension of aid to Sri Lanka.

Readers would recall that on December 24, the German Minister for Overseas Development, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul told a Berlin newspaper that Germany had suspended aid to Sri Lanka because of the continuing violence there.

She said no further aid would be given until the peace process moves forward. This report was picked up by international agencies and foreign media and was widely circulated. The news was even broadcast on RTHK in Hong Kong. As far as I know this story was never denied by the German Government or the minister in question.

Then almost three weeks later the German Embassy in Colombo issues a rather lengthy statement putting a Goebbelsian spin on the minister's remarks. What is more, it even takes upon itself the task of defending the Berghof Foundation which had come in for some stick in the media and elsewhere.

Why the Foundation could not deny that it had asked for diplomatic status and found itself tongue tied on this occasion, remains a mystery.

The embassy claims that the minister's remarks have been "misinterpreted." If so, any corrections should have been made immediately not three weeks later.

Aid, it said, has not been stopped, just that it is not deemed "appropriate" to consider new aid right now. That is because the "new wave of violations of the ceasefire and other hindrances have severely affected" a number of German projects in the north and east.

The implication is that as long as the situation remains the same Germany would keep away and keep their money. A few paragraphs later it says that in fact greater efforts are being made to assist people and Germany has "adjusted its strategy focusing even more on aid for the poor, especially those in the north and east……"

If the violence in the north and east brought their projects to a virtual halt then how come more aid is to be poured into those very areas where violence prevented projects from being carried out?

What is appears to mean is that aid is being suspended because it is not possible to work in those areas. Then you intend putting more aid into the same areas.

We probably lack the dialectical skills to understand the complex workings of the Teutonic mind.