Of Eelam politics....

Condemning a recent decision of chief minister J Jayalalithaa to send a Sri Lankan football team back home and suspend an officer who facilitated a match in the city, DMK president M Karunanidhi said sports and cultural ties should be kept away from politics.
Karunanidhi said such a move had emboldened some elements to attack Sri Lankan pilgrims and this could affect bilateral relations between India and Sri Lanka. The attacks had compelled the Sri Lankan government to issue an advisory to its citizens against travelling to Tamil Nadu.
When a team from the United Nations is scheduled to visit Sri Lanka to meet people affected by the ethnic war and suggest measures, such incidents could create problems for Tamils in the Island nation, he said in a statement. Karunanidhi said Tamils are not against any race. “It is unacceptable to attack Sri Lankans coming to Tamil Nadu or any other part of India for sports, tourism or cultural exchange. But we will continue to oppose Sri Lanka’s actions against humanity,” he said.
According to state intelligence reports, there were a few Tamils as well among the 184 Sri Lankan pilgrims, who were heckled in Thanjavur and Trichy by cadres of some pro-Eelam outfits. Since the end of the ethnic strife in Sri Lanka, political parties and pro-Eelam groups in Tamil Nadu have been vying with each other to take up the cause of Sri Lankan Tamils and project themselves as crusaders of the Eelam cause.
In his statement, Karunanidhi alluded to the “bond” between Tamils in Sri Lanka and those in Tamil Nadu as an umbilical cord. He said there were lakhs of internally-displaced Tamils in Sri Lanka who are yet to be rehabilitated. “We should not create a situation that would further increase their difficulties,” Karunanidhi said, adding that actions spurred by emotions will result in “unwanted consequences.”


 In their first substantive interaction after India’s contentious vote at the UN Human Rights Council censuring Sri Lanka, PM Manmohan Singh and President Mahinda Rajapaksa are likely to meet during the latter’s ‘private visit’ to India starting September 20.
Government sources confirmed that India has conveyed Singh’s inclination to have a meeting with Rajapaksa, who has not hidden his displeasure over India’s vote in favour of the US-sponsored resolution, even as they suggested that the feelers for such a meeting first came from the Lankan side.
Rajapaksa is expected to lay the foundation stone for a Buddhist university at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh on September 21 in what Lankan authorities have described as a private visit.
Sri Lankan government sources confirmed that the president will be in Delhi on September 20 but refused to reveal anything more. Interestingly, Indian officials were at pains to explain that they responded by communicating the government’s desire for a meeting between the two leaders only after some “positive indications'' from the island nation for such a meeting.
While the Indian government has been in rapprochement mode after the UNHRC vote, the government’s mood is reflected in the decision to allow the Kapilavastu relics to travel to Sri Lanka last month.
The meeting will come against the backdrop of latest strife over the issue of alleged attacks on Indian fishermen by the Lankan navy and almost retaliatory attacks in Tamil Nadu on Lankan pilgrims.