President Ranasinghe Premadasa threatened to commit suicide if his demand for the Indian Peace Keeping Forces IPKF to cease their operation against the LTTE was not met before July 29, 1989, according to a former Indian high commissioner.
The threat was made to Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s special envoy B.D. Deshmukh. The envoy who had come to Sri Lanka to deliver a special message from the Indian premier was startled by President Premadasa’s threat which was made in the presence of India’s High Commissioner Lakhan Mehrotra who reveals the details in his book, My Days in Sri Lanka.
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| Premadasa |
The book is now on sale in Sri Lanka at Vijitha Yapa Bookshop. This and other dramatic details are revealed in the 254-page book.
President Premadasa also threatened to declare the Indian Army in Sri Lanka as ‘an occupation force’.. Mr. Premadasa also threatened that if his demand was not met, he would recall Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner from India and told Mr. Mehrotra he also could go back to India, the ex-envoy says.
Mr. Mehrotra describes the days when Sri Lanka-India relations were at their lowest ebb and says the situation was leading to “a step by step escalation of the hostile drive against India”. This was nine days before IPKF was asked to stop operations against the LTTE.
“If on that day hostilities were to break out between the IPKF and Sri Lankan Army: If the Indian High Commission in Colombo were to be surrounded by blood thirsty JVP demonstrators; If the diplomatic relations between the two countries got fractured and their missions in each other’s capital wound up; if Sri Lanka’s Parliament were to abrogate the 1987 accord, all according to the President’s declared plan, the situation could reach a point of no return.
“Things were getting hotter by the day and moving towards a direct confrontation between the two armies”, Mr. Mehrotra says in the book.
He adds, “It was the President’s calculation that a few clashes in the North East between the IPKF and the Sri Lanka Army would bring enough coffins into Colombo to create a sense of national outrage against what he was about to declare as an occupation force”.
Mr. Mehrotra dramatically says, “A war with India of President Premadasa’s own making was close at hand”. The IPKF Commander Amarjeet Singh Kalkat warned that it would be most unfortunate if the President of Sri Lanka forced the IPKF’s hand to shoot Sri Lankan Armed Forces, as he took orders from the President of India, not from the President of Sri Lanka. |
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