Six decades ago Hitler used his military might to annex adjacent countries like the Rhineland, Austria and Czecoslovakia by instilling fear of his military might in the rulers of those countries. He did this even without firing a shot and gave the impression that the leaders of those countries had in fact invited Hitler to take over their lands. At the same time the leaders of the world community were paying their obeisance to Hitler. We all know how all this finally ended.

Today we are witnessing a similar situation with America trying to instil fear on all nations by a show of its military strength. They first demanded that the Palestenians get rid of their leader Arafat. The Palastinians just ignored this demand. They then attacked Afghanistan to get rid of Osama bin Laden and inspite of using all kinds of weapons of destruction, they were able only to kill innocent men, women and children. They are now amassing their military strength to remove President Saddam Hussein and are prepared to go to war with or without UN approval. I saw a very touching scene on CNN television of an American soldier about to leave for the Gulf hugging his wife and son so lovingly whilst bidding them good bye. The irony of it is that this soldier is on his way to destroy the lives of innocent wives and children of Iraq. Everyone knows that Iraq is no match as shown by the gigantic build up of American and British military might in the Gulf. I hope that as civilised countries, they are only trying to instil fear among the people of Iraq to persuade Saddam Hussein to abdicate and not really to demolish this country killing so many innocent people. How on earth can they eradicate world terrorism by just removing Saddam Hussein.

Here we see the LTTE who are called the most ruthless terrorists in the world getting all its demands met by scaring the government, which, depends on the continuation of the peace process, for survival. They too are negotiating for a peace of their own definition whilst preparing for war. They have instilled fear in the government of their military capabilities and they violate the MoU at will leaving it to our negotiators to defend these violations. They are not prepared to give up even one single gun. What has been achieved so far could have been done just over the telephone. The moment these LTTE terrorists allowed the words FEDERALISM to escape their lips, our negotiators went berserk and most of our legislators are jaunting around the world to find out what form of federalism is suitable for our country! This whole business of peace making has got so internationalised that even Japan wants to get involved in it. They are offering financial assistance inspite of their country being in a financial crisis with thousands of corporates going bankrupt and their biggest bank in big trouble with 17 billion US dollars of non recoverable loans! All this assistance these countries are offering is for the North and East with only crumbs falling to the South. Why is this attachment only to a part of Sri Lanka when the whole of Sri Lanka has been devastated by terrorist attacks. To add insult to injury the World Bank has no confidence in our financial administration and are we going to accept without any shame the proposal that the World Bank will grant the loans for the rehabilitation of the North and East but will be administered by them and not the government, although the government or rather the people in the South will be required to repay the loans and the interest? How can any government with an iota of self respect agree to such a proposal?
P. S. Mahawatte
Colombo 5.