Dividend for Canada if Sri Lankan Peace Holds

Compromise is key to peace in Sri Lanka, says Canadian Minister

Ottawa, May 01, 2002 (SAMS). David Kilgour, the Secretary of State for Asia Pacific, returned from a four day official visit through Sri Lanka that took him to areas experiencing the positive effects of the cease fire and ongoing peace negotiations brokered by Norway.

In an exclusive interview to SAMS, Kilgour says the scariest moment of his four day tour in the war torn area was when the window wipers of his helicopter stopped during a heavy rainstorm while flying over Batticaloa. The helicopter of another Sri Lankan minister traveling crashed the previous year during a similar storm while flying over the same area. “That was the most terrifying moment,” says Kilgour.

The peace process is trudging ahead slowly in an effort to stop the civil war that has ravaged the country for two decades. For the time being at least, Sri Lanka is enveloped in peace, upon his return, Kilgour says he recommended changing Canada’s travel advisory to Sri Lanka.

“It certainly seemed safe to travel to the places we were – in Colombo and Trincomalee. Everybody [we met], from the moment we landed to the moment we left, I would say people were cautiously optimistic that the peace was going to hold,” says Kilgour.

“That was very encouraging given the terrible, terrible, human suffering and loss of lives on both sides.” Kilgour spent most of his tour in Colombo.

Although he didn’t meet the President of Sri Lanka, Kilgour spoke with the president’s advisor, government ministers as well as other Sri Lankan parliament members and Tamil representatives. He says it’s obvious that the new government is trying to push the peace process along. “There is a sense of real optimism that the government is really committed to this [peace process]”, says Kilgour.

Lasting peace is the answer to helping the country’s economic problems and the key to a stable economic future, says Kilgour. The rule of law, investment safeguards, a working democracy and human rights are some of the criteria necessary to attract foreign investment. “If you don’t have all those things or at least most of them, [no country] would be able to attract foreign investment,” says Kilgour. “We have to have an investment plan so that people will feel that their money isn’t going to be bombed away, or inflated away or taxed away or depreciated away in one way form or another.”

Kilgour says there are several confidence measures that need to be implemented to ensure the success of the negotiation process. Kilgour says the biggest possible obstacle that could face the peace process is unwillingness to compromise between the warring sides.

 “If they don’t want to look at things differently than they have been in the past and it’s a question of overcoming that inertia, says Kilgour adding that all parties involved need to realize that compromise is a good word – the key to Canadian success.

The government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) signed a cease fire agreement for an indefinite period – the closest Sri Lanka has come to peace since war broke out in 1983. Recently the United National Party won an enormous victory in the local government election suggesting that there is tremendous support for the peace process among Sri Lankans.

Kilgour hopes to set up meetings with the expatriate community to determine the role Canada should play with respect to the ongoing peace effort. “That is a huge community and I am sure that most of those people would like to go back and make investments and so on. And all of those people have seen how well Canada works and people who lived here know these issues very well.”

Canada’s expatriate Sri Lankan community is one of the largest in the world – numbering over 250,000 people. It is clear to Kilgour that peace in Sri Lanka will have positive reverberations in Canada. He says he is already seeing signs that the Canadian Sinhalese and Tamil expatriate communities are coming closer together.