US urges India to pressurize Sri Lanka to devolve power under the 13th Amendment
The United States diplomatic mission in New Delhi will soon endeavor to bring “sense” to the political establishment in India, reluctant so far to intervene in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka, the importance of bringing pressure on Sri Lanka to devolve power under the Thirteenth Amendment.
In Washington at the State Department assistant secretary Robert Blake will use his clout to convince policymakers of both Obama and Clinton, and Congressional leaders the way out for Sri Lanka is devolution of power through which to address 12% Tamil minority aspirations and grievances. At the American embassy in Delhi the State Department already has a Sri Lankan expert as its deputy chief of mission Peter Burleigh taken out of his well earned retirement from the State Department.
Soon to be installed American ambassador to Sri Lanka Patricia Butenis whose reputation for deeply meddling in her previous posting in Bangladesh was well documented in these columns and considered a tough nut to crack. Sri Lanka’s former Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike was once reputed for cracking a tough nut, Francis Willis, who presided over the American embassy in Colombo in the early sixties on the issue of nationalization of American oil companies. The U.S. could not pull a covert operation in Sri Lanka the manner in which they pulled to depose Iran’s Mohamed Mozadegh in 1954.
Instead, U.S. suspended the low-interest food aid which was provided under PL 480 Food Aid Program but several months later learning that Bandaranaike was a hard nut to crack resumed the food aid. Bandaranaike who went on to a second term in the seventies described the West as ‘rapacious’ because of their meddling in the internal affairs of her nation and their endeavor to set the national agenda that fitted the ‘rapacious West’.
On May 18 this year another head of state in Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, cracked even a harder nut – Velupillai Prabhakaran and his outfit that influenced Sri Lanka’s national agenda for three decades. Sri Lanka is now faced with another hard nut who will descend in Colombo probably in early August – new American ambassador Patricia Butenis. This time Sri Lanka’s national agenda is being drawn jointly by Blake’s office in Washington, Peter Burleigh’s office in New Delhi and Butenis’ Executive Office in Colombo.
The new American ambassador to Delhi Timothy Roemer has pledged to ‘rope’ Indian political establishment for the U.S. (and the West) to exert pressure on the Rajapaksa regime to implement what the West thinks is beneficial for Sri Lanka’s long-term progress. Evidences toward that end are emerging very clearly. The United States ‘significant strategic interests’ in Sri Lanka is cited lately in order to develop policy planks of this agenda.
