Another former US envoy goes to Chennai to save Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 February 2011, 17:42 GMT]
Former US envoy to Sri Lanka Teresita Schaffer, speaking at a forum on ‘US perspective on security in South Asian region with special emphasis on Nepal and Sri Lanka’ in Chennai on Monday, ruled out American backing for Tamil Eelam, reported Express News Service, Tuesday. The ex envoy was harping on genuine reconciliation, focus on war crimes investigation and shared her apprehension that “If the reconciliation process is allowed to slide, then some new internal conflict may spring up,” but conceded that she had no idea of how to approach. “I don’t have any clear sense on how one can persuade the Sri Lankan leader on reconciliation,” the ex envoy said. Obviously the helplessness comes by refusing to recognize long-existing realities, commented a political observer in Chennai, long familiar with the competitive Indo-US deceit on Eezham Tamils.

Negating Tamil independence is the primary source of encouragement to genocide and that will never help reconciliation of peoples in the island, the political observer further said.

The former US envoy to Sri Lanka, Teresita Schaffer is currently the director of the South Asia Programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Writing on Monday in The Independent on Obama sending a former US envoy to meet Egypt’s Mubarak, Robert Fisk citing an American political researcher Nicholas Noe, said that the US is now subcontracting or ‘privatising’ crisis management.

A former US diplomat Richard Armitage was recently sent to Colombo and that is said to have materialised the sudden ‘private’ visit of war crimes accused SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa to the US.

According to Schaffer, “South Asia gained importance in strategic thinking of the US during the last five years. Earlier, it was focused on Persian Gulf and Japan. Now the policy is driven by great possibilities of ties with India.”

Schaffer further said that she did not expect the US and Indian alliance against China, but at the same time added that China was one of the factors for the alliance.

Chronology: