Inderfurth talks extradition pact

Ambassador Karl F. Inderfurth, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs in the US State Department, arrived in Colombo on Friday.

The discussions centred on the formulation of an extradition treaty between Sri Lanka and India, increasing tourism, improving trade relations and a variety of other issues.

Ambassador Inderfurth met Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar for an informal dinner on Friday night, hours before the latter's departure to Jamaica. He also had a meeting on Friday with the Leader of the Opposition Ranil Wickramasinghe and was accompanied by the US Ambassador in Sri Lanka, Shaun Donnelly.

During a breakfast meeting with Tamil political parties Ambassador Inderfurth declared that the United States was in favour of a facilitator or facilitators to end the Tamil ethnic conflict.

Last night the United States Ambassador accorded him a dinner which was attended by Tamil political parties, polls monitors and the like.

Ambassador Inderfurth is the State Department official with primary responsibility for managing U.S. relations with the countries of South Asia — India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. U.S. interests in South Asia are growing. One sign is the very establishment of the Bureau Ambassador Inderfurth heads. South Asian Affairs is the newest of the State Department's several geographic bureaus. 

Mr. Inderfurth has made a name for himself as a print and broadcast journalist too having won several awards for reporting including an Emmy Award for broadcast journalism. 

As ABC's resident correspondent from February 1989 to August 1991, Mr. Inderfurth covered the historic transformation of the Soviet Union. 

New transformer security, but guards not paid

By Faraza Farook

The Defence Ministry began a recruitment drive for trainees for the National guard while in Colombo the CEB in coordination with the Police and the Army has launched a new security plan for transformers and feeder boxes.

The move comes in the wake of a series of transformer blasts in Colombo.

The CEB has made arrangements with the Police to deploy civilians to protect both transformers and feeder boxes.

The guards were recruited with a promise to pay Rs. 200 a day for their work from dusk to dawn but no payment has been made yet.

"After two weeks of work we have not still received our payments, but we are hoping they will pay us. Otherwise we will have to give up," one of the guards at Pettah said. 

Colombo Central Division police inspector Mahanama Karunaratne said the civilian guards were coming to the police station to claim payments but the police wer helpless as the CEB had not remitted the cash. 

Some of the guards were seen sleeping after entrusting their duty to two other colleagues assigned to look after other transformers or feeder boxes.

The civilian guards were also confused as to whether the CEB had directed the police to protect only transformers or to also protect the feeder boxes.

CEB Chairman P.A.M. Deraniyagala refused to comment on the security situation or regarding the payments to be made to the civilian guards. 

"Police and army patrols are conducting patrols every night in an attempt to prevent attacks," a CEB official said. 

He said the CEB was considering the placing of permanent covers around the transformers.

Several transformers were damaged in blasts last year. After a lull, there was a resurgence with six blasts being reported during the past three weeks.

Some investigators blamed the LTTE but others blamed unscrupulous political elements.

SLMC-PA ties: decision soon

By Chamintha Thilakarathna

SLMC General secretary Rauf Hakeem said the party's policy-making working committee would meet at the Colombo headquarters to assess the situation carefully and take a decision.

He said most members now felt the SLMC should contest on its own, especially in areas such as Kalutara when the Western Provincial elections were held. SLMC leader M. H. M. Ashraff described the Wayamba polls as shameful and called for its cancellation. The party also issued a formal statement, calling for a meeting of the PA executive committee to review the situation.

inside the glass house

Small arms: big problem world over

by thalif deen at the united nations

Headed by onetime Hollywood movie star Charlton ("The Ten Commandments") Heston, the NRA received half-hearted approval last year as a UN-blessed non-governmental organisation (NGO) advocating the cause of handgun owners, ironically, in an Organisation dedicated to world peace.

The American small arms industry - which nurtures and funds the NRA as a lobbying group- is now under fire.

A group of six people, whose friends or family members have been killed by firearms, are suing 25 US handgun manufacturers accusing them of negligent marketing practices that have "put guns into the hands of shooters."The defendants include Smith & Wesson, Colt and Beretta USA,

The landmark case, currently being heard in a Federal District Court in New York, is based on the argument that gun manufacturers, not shooters, are legally and morally liable for all the killings in the US and throughout the world. If gun makers lose this lawsuit, they may be gradually driven out of business. The trial is being carefully monitored by those who are already waiting in line to sue the industry. The fresh wave of public anger against firearm manufacturers comes at a time when the United Nations has itself launched a global campaign against small arms. Seeking to cut off the flow of light weapons from the world's battle zones, the UN is also watching the outcome of the case in a country which is one of the world's major arms manufacturers. The UN says that small arms- including assault rifles, grenade launchers, landmines, machine guns, mortars, and pistols- are primarily responsible for most of the killings in ethnic conflicts and civil wars throughout the world.

Conscious of the need to stem the flow of illicit weapons to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Sri Lanka is backing a proposal for an international conference on the illicit arms trade.

The meeting, which is to be held in Geneva in the year 2000, will attempt to set up a UN mechanism to track the movement of small arms as they make their way into the hands of rebel groups and terrorist organisations worldwide. The present Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, who resurrected the UN's Department for Disarmament Affairs,is seeking a subregional moratorium on trafficking in small arms. "A precedent exists," he says, citing a self-imposed arms embargo by Latin American countries in November 1997.

UN Under-Secretary-General Jayantha Dhanapala, who heads the Department for Disarmament Affairs, says there is a sense of great urgency for "prompt and effective global action" to restrict the flow of small arms. According to Dhanapala, about 500 million small arms are floating around the world.

"Small arms have been or are the primary or sole tools of violence in most of the recent armed conflicts dealt with by the United Nations where fighting involves irregular troops," Dhanapala says. Recent conflicts, in which small arms have caused death and destruction, have taken place in Rwanda, Angola, Bosnia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Chechnya, Georgia, Guatemala, Liberia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka.

In contrast to Heston, another Hollywood super star Michael Douglas, is now a UN ambassador of Peace battling the US arms industry. 

At a UN luncheon recently, he said that the dramatic increase in civilian deaths is a direct result of the ease with which so many people in so many countries supporting so many causes can obtain small arms.

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