Norway Wake Up

Norway special envoy to Sri Lanka to visit India

(October, 15, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Norway's special envoy to Sri Lanka, Jon Hanssen Bauer, is to visit India soon to explore how to take ahead the fractured peace process in Sri Lanka. But there are no immediate prospects of fresh peace talks.

Bauer will be meeting officials of the external affairs ministry and National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan to have a personal assessment of what India is thinking vis-a-vis the Sri Lankan conflict.

It will be the first trip to New Delhi this year by Bauer, who was named special envoy in March 2006 but who quickly went off the peace facilitation radar in the wake of escalating violence in Sri Lanka.

Indian officials will provide the 55-year-old diplomat a detailed view of what they feel has gone wrong in Sri Lanka, where fighting involving the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has killed the Norway-brokered 2002 ceasefire agreement (CFA) for all practical purposes and intent.

Informed sources, however, told IANS that there were no prospects of Colombo authorities and the LTTE meeting any time soon to resume the stalled peace negotiations.

'The visit is meant to keep up contacts and spirits. And hope,' one source said.

Bauer will not visit Sri Lanka this time. But he may, hopefully, in the not too distant future, the sources said.

Bauer's visit comes just months after Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse met Norwegian International Development Minister Erik Solheim, the former special envoy who still oversees the peace process, in Geneva.

It will also take place shortly after Rajapakse's trip to New Delhi where he met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and said that his government would be willing to talk if the Tigers showed interest in 'genuine negotiations'.

LTTE chief Velupillai Prabahakaran, who is faced with one of the most serious military challenges since he started his armed campaign for Tamil Eelam, will be making his annual policy statement in November-end.

India is seriously concerned over the situation in Sri Lanka, where the military's success in driving away the LTTE from the eastern province has made it gung-ho about taking on the LTTE entrenched in the north. If that happens, it could be a messy affair.

At the same time, the earlier hopeful signs of Colombo unveiling a credible power sharing arrangement have given way to despair following political developments that have disappointed those who still nurture a belief in a negotiated settlement.
(Agencies)