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Lankan minister calls Miliband visit a joke
A top Sri Lankan minister has described British Foreign Secretary's visit to the island country this week as a "joke" and accused him of basing his policy on LTTE's propaganda.
A top Sri Lankan minister has described British Foreign Secretary's visit to the island country this week as a "joke" and accused him of basing his policy on LTTE's propaganda.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka's defence minister and the president's brother, said: "In David Miliband's constituency there are many Tamils and they want to save the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) leadership, not civilians. It's a joke."
Rajapaksa said the Sri Lankan government has proved that they could save the civilians by rescuing 200,000. "So why so many foreign minsiters in this indecent hurry?" he asked.
British Foreign Secretary Miliband and France's Minister of Foreign Affairs Bernard Kouchner were in Colombo on Wednesday to impress upon the government to announce a "ceasefire" in its offensive against Tamil Tigers and allow international aid agencies access to the war zone Rajapaksa told The Daily Telegraph that the international community was putting unnecessary pressure on his government.
He singled out this week's visit of Miliband and his French counterpart Kouchnner as a "waste of time."
He said "when Prabhakaran, the LTTE leader, killed so many innocent civilians, no foreign minister came or put pressure on the LTTE. Where was Miliband? What happened to him? Was he sleeping? We're just wasting our time with these dignitaries and VIPs coming to this country over and over again because of your internal problem to satisfy their (Tamil) diaspora."
