Menon, Narayanan: Emissaries

New Delhi, April 23: National security adviser M.K. Narayanan and foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon will visit Sri Lanka tomorrow as New Delhi’s emissaries to ask Colombo to cease hostilities with the LTTE at once.

“We are very unhappy at the continued killing in Sri Lanka. All killing must stop. There must be immediate cessation of all hostilities,” a foreign ministry statement said.

Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee had earlier in the day asked Sri Lanka to “pause” the fighting till all the civilians had been evacuated from the conflict zone.

Congress sources said the Centre faced “enormous pressure” from Tamil Nadu ally DMK and the state Congress to ask Colombo to stop its military offensive against the LTTE.

The DMK shut down Tamil Nadu for 12 hours on the issue today, and an ADMK supporter set himself on fire to protest the state and central governments’ failure to solve the Lankan Tamils’ problems.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this evening reviewed the Lanka situation for the second consecutive day at a meeting with Mukherjee, defence minister A.K. Antony and home minister P. Chidambaram.

Colombo, however, hit back at international appeals for a ceasefire saying the world should not seek to solve its “domestic compulsions” through its stand on the Lankan Tamil issue.

“I call on the international community to be realistic in their expectations by being in tandem with the ground conditions and not (be) swayed by erroneous propaganda, nor seek to solve their domestic compulsions at the expense of the envisaged agenda of the Sri Lankan government,” foreign minister Rohitha Bogollogama said.

The US and Britain had joined India in appealing for a ceasefire amid growing international concern for the tens of thousands of Tamil civilians trapped by the war. The UN has asked Colombo to provide its staffers access to the conflict zone to help the civilians.

The Indian foreign ministry statement said: “We understand that over 100,000 civilians have emerged from the no-fire zone into areas under government control in the past three days but the lives of several thousands of innocent civilians remain threatened.”

“We are requesting Sri Lankan authorities to have a pause or cessation of hostilities till the last civilian comes out of the conflict zone,” Mukherjee had earlier said.

“We have no sympathy for the terrorists but we have very deep concern for the civilians. Repeatedly we have asked Sri Lankan authorities that military solution is no solution. Ultimately it will have to be a political solution.”

In Tamil Nadu, buses stayed off the roads and shops were closed but train and air services were not affected. State government offices saw poor attendance but central offices and banks functioned mostly as usual.

There was little emotional fervour on the streets, though. DMK cadres and the public lazed on a hot afternoon, treating the shutdown as an undeclared holiday after a series of such protests by the DMK had failed to bring results.

The only show of emotion in Chennai came from chief minister M. Karunanidhi, who released a poem seeking all-round unity on the Lankan Tamil issue.

In Tirupur, however, Mani, 43, a worker in a dyeing factory, doused himself with kerosene and set himself on fire and is now fighting for his life with 90 per cent burns.

If the DMK has been desperate to keep itself on the “right” side of the Lankan Tamil issue, lest it become an election plank, ally Congress appeared equally keen not to put a foot wrong.

Chidambaram accused both the LTTE and the Sri Lanka government of ignoring India’s appeals to stop fighting, but said Colombo was “more at fault” since it appeared to believe in a military solution.

He described the strike as an expression of “anguish” against the killing of Tamils in Sri Lanka, and denied it was intended against the Centre or the Congress.

He ducked questions on Karunanidhi’s demand for snapping diplomatic ties with Colombo and on possible asylum for LTTE chief V. Prabhakaran, saying he couldn’t comment on “serious” matters at a news briefing.

A day earlier, the Congress’s national spokesman had said the party could not back a bandh aimed at the Centre. Puducherry’s Congress government today extended silent co-operation to the DMK, ensuring there was no state transport.DMK candidates suspended their campaigns for the day, but ADMK leader J. Jayalalithaa went about hers, having already dismissed the strike as empty posturing.

The DMK has gone through a series of protests in recent weeks but failed to stop the Lankan war. Now, as the war approaches an end, the DMK and other pro-Eelam parties may need to reshape their slogans – from demanding cease-fire to appealing for a fair devolution of powers for the Lankan Tamils.

Chidambaram said: “The issue cannot be resolved by the army (but) through negotiations. The Tamils should be given equal respect, status and right. One or two Tamil-dominated provinces should be made states with equal rights within the Sri Lankan federal set-up.”