Wednesday April 16 2008
P K Balachandran
COLOMBO: The cordial meeting between Priyanka Vadra, daughter of the slain former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and Nalini Sriharan, one of the convicted conspirators in the assassination case, may help rapprochement between India and the Sri Lankan Tamils, says a pro-Tamil Tiger political leader.
“I am very happy, because the meeting could lead to a closer relationship between India and the Sri Lankan Tamils,” said S. Kajendran of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which is a proxy of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Indian courts have held the LTTE responsible for assassinating Gandhi, using a female suicide bomber at an election rally in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991.
The meeting between Vadra and Sriharan took place on March 19 in Vellore jail, where Sriharan is serving a life sentence for her role in the assassination of Gandhi.
“India and the Sri Lankan Tamils have of late been coming closer step by step. We expect the gap to be closed before long. The Priyanka-Nalini meeting has occurred at the right time,” Kajendran, an MP from Jaffna district, told this website's News Paper on Wednesday.
“We acknowledge that undesirable events had taken place in the past, but we wish to tell Indian officials that it is time the past was buried and a new relationship built,” he said.
“We wish to point out that while the other communities in Sri Lanka may change their stance on India and become hostile to it, when it suits them, the Sri Lankan Tamils will always stand by India’s national interests,” he added.
Kajendran discounted the possibility that the LTTE had a hand in arranging the meeting between Sriharan and Vadra. His party colleague and fellow MP from Jaffna, Suresh Premachandran, said he saw no political motive behind the meeting or sense a political fallout.
“Priyanka may well be speaking the truth when she said that she just wanted to know who killed her father and also to show that she harboured no anger against the killers,” said Premachandran who, as a leader of the Eelam Peoples’ Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), earlier had close links with India.
“There is no possibility of the meeting representing a rapprochement between India and the LTTE as India’s position on the LTTE is clear,” he added.
Several others drew different conclusions.
Kanamayilnathan, editor of the Jaffna-based Tamil daily “Uthayan,” said the meeting could not have been arranged by the LTTE. “I do not think that they have the ability to go as far up as Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka,” he said.
“Priyanka would have wanted to get the fury out of her system. I also do not see the hand of the LTTE in it,” said Dr. John Gunaratne, an ambassador turned academic.
“Wanting to meet a murderess is appalling, but then women are different!” said K. Godage, former Associate Foreign Secretary.
“The visit could not be that innocent. It might have had a link with the coming elections in India wherein the Congress Party could be angling for the Tamil nationalist vote,” said Prabhath Sahabandu, editor of The Island daily. “But I don’t believe India will ever change its policy on the Tamil question. It is irreversible.”
Newindpress
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