India makes diplomatic push after Sri Lanka war ends
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India sent two top envoys to Sri Lanka on Thursday to offer help for Tamil civilians displaced in recent fighting and to seek an early political solution after the defeat of the rebel Tamil Tigers.
The trip by National Security Adviser M.K.Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon signalled renewed Indian engagement after a largely hands-off approach over the past two years as its close neighbour pursued a military end to the 25-year-old ethnic conflict.
New Delhi is also seeking to calm Tamils in India, mainly in southern Tamil Nadu state, home to 60 million people who are closely linked to the Tamils of Sri Lanka, analysts said.
"The trip is partly aimed at the constituency inside India, address the concerns of many people here at the very large level of suffering of civilians," said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute of Conflict Management (ICM).
"Beyond that, there is the more serious issue of ensuring that Tamils get a fair deal," he said. The ICM tracks insurgencies across South Asia
Unofficial and unverified U.N. tallies show 7,000 civilians have been killed since January alone. Aid agencies say some 280,000 ethnic Tamils who fled the war zone are being held in overcrowded refugee camps.
On Wednesday, the world body accused Sri Lankan authorities of blocking access to civilians still in the former war zone or who have fled to camps for displaced people.
Sahni said it was possible that a handful of Liberation Tigers of Tami Eelam (LTTE) cadres may have smuggled themselves into the camps for the displaced, and authorities were trying to screen the former combatants.
"This is a troubling aspect of the post-conflict (period). The proclivity of the Sri Lankan government to hold the displaced people till they had vetted everyone of them cannot be an interminable process," he said.
The Sri Lankan military declared victory over the LTTE after a climactic gunbattle on Monday in which the rebels' leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran was killed.
All of Sri Lanka is now completely under the control of the government for the first time since the war erupted in 1983 over the treatment of minority Tamils in the Sinhalese-majority country.
INFLUENCE
New Delhi will be pressing for a political solution to address the grievances of the Tamil people, the foreign ministry said. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's coalition this week begins a second term in office after winning a general election in which it managed to limit the fallout of the war in Sri Lanka.
"India will work with the people and government of Sri Lanka to provide relief to those affected by the tragic conflict, and to rapidly rehabilitate all those who have been displaced," the foreign ministry said in a statement this week.
New Delhi is also keen to ensure that it retains influence in the island and keep rivals China and Pakistan at greater length.
While New Delhi couldn't be seen openly arming the Sri Lankan military to fight its war with the Tamil Tigers because of the concerns of Tamils at home, China and Pakistan have had no such difficulty in helping the military effort.
Both countries are known to have helped the Sri Lankan army build up its offensive capabilities.
China is also helping Sri Lanka build the Hambantota port, which many see as part of Beijing's "String of Pearls" strategy of building relations with countries along sea lanes from the Middle East to the South China Sea.
"There were openings in the strategic space. China exploited them," Sahni said.
(Editing by Paul Tait)