transcurrents.com

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha MP

by Prof Rajiva Wijesinha MP

The more extreme elements in the Ministry of External Affairs have at last put their cards on the table in the form of an article by the wife of one of its rising stars. The same young lady kindly gave me an opportunity to engage in a strong critique of the viewpoints she represented, when she gratuitously attacked me some weeks back.

What is astonishing is that this article is based on the premise that countries like Cuba and Venezuela are anathema at present to Sri Lanka. I suspect it will be news to President Rajapaksa that Cuba is a failed state and that a positive view of Chavez ‘fundamentally undermines everything Sri Lanka has stood for since it inherited a liberal democracy post 1948’. [click here to read in full ~ on dbsjeyaraj.con: Denizens of the Ministry of External Affairs have no understanding at all of Foreign Policy]

Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe and Ambassador Dayan Jayatilleka at UNHRC special session on Sri Lanka, in Geneva on May 26, 2009.-pic courtesy: Getty images

by Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

Reflections on the Third Anniversary of the Diplomatic Victory

May is the month of the diplomatic success of Sri Lanka and its friends at the Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2009. That battle and victory are now the target of criticism and historical revisionism.

It is alleged that Sri Lanka was brought onto the HRC agenda by our success, that the Sri Lankan team in Geneva at the time should have kept the resolution off the agenda as had our counterparts in New York, that the success of 2009 was the progenitor of an inevitable setback of March 2012 in the same arena, and that if we are in a hole today, we dug that hole in 2009. [click here to read in full ~ on dbsjeyaraj.com: The significance of Sri Lanka's success at the UNHRC in Geneva, May 2009]