Egypt April 8- Member states of the Arab League made a commitment to support Sri Lanka’s candidacy to the United Nations Human Rights Council when voting takes place in May this year, Rohitha Bogollagama, Foreign Affairs Minister, said after meeting with Amre Moussa, Secretary General of the Arab League, today.
Bogollagama said that Sri Lanka’s submissions to join the Organisation of Oil Importing Countries as an observer will be given special consideration and a commendation from the Arab League.
Moussa had told Bogollagama that Sri Lanka should submit a Development Plan so that the Arab League could give development assistance in identified crucial areas.
The Egyptian Foreign Minister, Aboul Gheit, who met Bogollagama last evening for bilateral talks had also pledged Egypt’s support for Sri Lanka’s candidacy to the UN Human Rights Council.
Gheit had also called for a collective effort on counter terrorism and invited Sri Lanka’s participation for a conference on anti terrorism to be organized by Egypt later this year, an initiative that had come out of the Ministerial Asia-Middle East Dialogue (AMED) meeting in Sharm El Shiekh, attended by 50 foreign ministers, last week.
Bogollagama said that the Egyptian Foreign Minister had condemned the atrocities committed by the LTTE and had expressed his admiration of Sri Lanka as a country and pledged Egypt’s support to combat terrorism.
After meeting with Moussa, Bogollagama delivered a lecture at the Centre for Asian Studies of the Cairo University where he said that the government would deal with LTTE the way a terrorist organization had to be dealt with, by combating it in all its manifestations and forms, while the political process was left open to integrate them into the political mainstream and away from violence.
He made reference to the 13th amendment and how it would devolve power to the people themselves, thereby bringing about a lasting solution, without isolating communities.
"A terrorist must be identified with his organization and not the community he belongs to. The world should realize that a terrorist may come from a certain community, but that the community is not a terrorist community, it is time the world made this distinction clear without labeling certain communities," he said in reply to a question that expressed popular, although misguided and biased, sentiment that Islam was a violent religion.
Last weekend, Bogollagama took the opportunity of holding bilateral talks with his counterparts from Brunei, Egypt, Palestine, Malaysia, Morocco the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia for their pledges to support Sri Lanka’s candidacy to the UN Human Rights Council.
The life of Rizana, on death-row in Saudi Arabia for the death of an Infant, was given priority when Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama met his counterpart of the Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry.
Rizana, who entered Saudi Arabia two years ago on a passport that falsified her age, was accused and sentenced for being responsible for the death of an infant in her care.
"Our Deputy Foreign Minister had visited the country several times to try make the parents of the infant grant Rizana clemency but while the father seems to have softened, the mother is not moving," Bogollagama told Prince Torky Al Kabir, Undersecretary of Multilateral Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia.
"The problem we have is that she may not have understood the confession, other legal documents and the proceedings because the translator was from India and the dialect is different to what is spoken (in Tamil) in Sri Lanka," he said.
Kabir said that he would do all he can to resolve the matter but intimated that it would depend on the parents’ willingness to grant Rizana clemency.
Rizana had initially confessed to being responsible for the infant’s death but had later reneged on her statement and the Foreign Ministry said that her confession was the result of the confusion caused by the translation.
The Philippines had wanted Sri Lanka’s pledge to support the country’s nomination to the top seat of the International Court of Justice while Morocco requested Sri Lanka to support its claim to regions in the Sahara over that of Algeria.
"We propose autonomy to these regions and will like to know where Sri Lanka stands in this regard," Ahmed Lekharief, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jordan, asked.
Bogollagama replied that Sri Lanka would not support anything outside the parameters of the UN, a reason why Sri Lanka does not acknowledge Kosovo’s statehood.
As reported earlier, talks with Malaysia centred around terrorism with Sri Lanka looking for the two countries sharing intelligence on terrorist financing originating from Malaysia.
