Cat let out of the diplomatic bag

By Neville de Silva

Hearing about the efforts of the foreign ministry to discredit this column of two weeks ago and reading some of the ensuing correspondence, I could well understand why the Roman emperor Gaius, popularly called Caligula, wanted to make his horse a consul.
Caligula thought he could get more horse sense (not to mention diplomatic sense) out of his pet animal than from those entrusted with power and position.

If I am in the same frame of mind as Caligula it is because these recent diplomatic shenanigans involving the foreign ministry, our high commission in London and the commonwealth secretariat have reinforced my faith in four- legged animals over some homo sapiens who claim superiority by virtue of their powers of reasoning. Let me recapitulate for the readers what caused all this flutter in the diplomatic dovecotes in Colombo and London.

In this column last month I asked why the foreign minister and his ministry secretary who travel the world urging the international community to cooperate in counter terrorism, had not called a meeting of the Commonwealth Committee on Terrorism (CCT), the only commonwealth body devoted entirely to countering terrorism and of which we are a member. There were at least two occasions on which to raise this matter, one in March when Bogollagama called on Secretary-General Don Mckinnon and the other during the UN General assembly sessions in September. Shortly after that column appeared, our high commission in London replied with some argumentative frippery that never answered the question but made a vain attempt to show I was "ill-informed."

I had the opportunity to confirm my information this month at a lunch hosted by the Commonwealth Secretary-General. There I learnt from Commonwealth sources that at the March meeting McKinnon had indeed reminded Bogollagama and Palitha Kohona about the CCT and that Sri Lanka was a member, a fact they did not seem to know, according to my sources.

The very day my column appeared on November 11, our London High Commissioner promptly wrote a letter to the Secretary-General. It is inconceivable that on a Sunday when the high commission and Commonwealth offices are both closed, the high commissioner would have been in such an inordinate hurry to dash off a letter unless it was on the instructions of the ministry, just like the previous letter which had all the tell-tale marks of a flaccid and convoluted ministry response. What obviously the minister and secretary were trying to keep from the public was the fact of their ignorance that Sri Lanka was a member of the CCT which had not met since November 2003.

Then this attempt at a camouflage took a curious turn. Having received a reply from the director of the Secretary-General's office, the foreign ministry's director-general of public communications Ravinatha Aryasinha writes to The Sunday Times parading the secretariat letter as though he had just discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. He claims that this letter "clearly indicates" that my "commentary is totally unfounded" and other inferences published elsewhere in this newspaper.

I don't know whether Aryasinha has problems with comprehension or whether he has merely signed a letter drafted by his politically-appointed bosses who believe they have reached great linguistic perfection. But it surely requires leaps in faith and comprehension to claim that the Secretary-General's letter "clearly indicates" anything of the sort.

The truth is that the Commonwealth Secretariat has been far cleverer and more circumspect than our foreign ministry run by amateurs. Though the ministry released the secretariat's reply to our high commissioner, Aryasinha refused to release the letter to the secretariat claiming it is confidential. That seems to stand logic on its head. The high commissioner's letter is confidential but apparently not the secretariat's reply to it. That raises another diplomatic issue. Was the secretariat told that its reply would be made public and is it aware that the letter addressed "Dear Kshenuka" would become a public document? If so would the secretariat have written what it has written knowing that I would see it? Has the foreign ministry breached protocol by releasing the letter in a desperate effort to hide its exposed posteriors?

The refusal leaves us to speculate on its contents. Judging by the secretariat's carefully-worded and intentionally vague reply, the high commissioner's letter appears to have said that the ministry has been embarrassed by remarks attributed to sources in the secretariat and that as a member-state it is perturbed that officials could have made such purported remarks which suggested ignorance on the part of the foreign ministry. They obviously expected a reply that would contradict what I had said and vindicate the ministry.

What the high commission received instead is a reply intended to assuage ruffled feathers and not to be made public. That is why the reply does not say where and how I have "misrepresented" the views of the Commonwealth Secretariat. The truth is I have not said a word about its views but, at one point, about its concerns. The secretariat also refers to "factual errors," but fails to point out a single because there aren't any. Had the secretariat known the ministry would release its reply I doubt it would have said what it did.
There are two matters I raised which are central to this debate. One is that at the March meeting between Secretary-General Don McKinnon and the Sri Lanka delegation that included Bogollagama and Kohona, McKinnon had pointed out the existence of the CCT, and even more importantly, that we are a member of it.

The other is that McKinnon having seen the paper Sri Lanka circulated ahead of the Kampala CHOGM proposing a ministerial level counter-terrorism conference in Colombo, had wondered why the proposal had not been first tested before the CCT, now that Colombo was aware of its existence.

Despite Aryasinha's hyperbolic conclusion that the secretariat reply "clearly indicates" that my remarks were "totally unfounded" the secretariat does not deny either or both of those comments intrinsic to my general argument about the amateurishness at the highest levels of the foreign ministry.

There were two sides to that March meeting. Is it not curious that neither the foreign ministry nor the Commonwealth Secretariat has denied that McKinnon made the remarks I said he did? Why? Because, if the ministry denies it, all those from the Secretariat present at that meeting would know the ministry is telling an untruth. The Secretariat does not deny it because it cannot. That is why the deafening silence on this from both sides. I wonder what the secretariat would say when it knows its letter has been made public?
Aryasinha claims that my comments were "based on speculation." So why did he and his bosses not immediately deny that McKinnon made those remarks instead of running to mama in London for solace in the secretariat?

Aryasinha's incontinent loquaciousness makes him accuse me of "personal prejudice" and not doing justice to the reputation of The Sunday Times. Personal prejudice against what or whom, pray? Is there anything in the foreign ministry of any value to be prejudiced about except its sheer incompetence under the present dispensation? Is it personal prejudice that has led almost every English language newspaper published in Colombo to make uncomplimentary remarks about the foreign ministry?

The reputation of The Sunday Times I am sure is quite safe in the hands of those who run it. Aryasinha should be more worried about the reputation of his own ministry which is so sullied both at home and abroad that it is leaving indelible smears on President Rajapaksa's government to the extent that presidential intervention was needed to stop the premature recalls of two ambassadors. Lack of space does not permit me to give other sordid details and other comments.

I don't know whether Aryasinha and his ministry bosses have heard of Ludwig Wittgenstein. It might be too late to educate them now. But they should at least heed his valuable advice: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereon one must be silent."