Source: The PENINSULA/ By Fazeena Saleem  

DOHA: Sri Lanka’s visiting Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama has invited businessmen from the Middle East to invest in his country for greater economic integration.

 “There is much potential to invest in infrastructure development, petroleum and petroleum-related products, electronics, textiles, banking and the service sector in Sri Lanka,” Bogollagama said while making a presentation on the Middle East region as a partner for Sri Lanka’s economic development, at the Mariott Hotel on Sunday.

Thousands of miles of ocean and years of history separate Gaza and Kilinochchi.

But the fall of the “capital” of the Tamil Tigers [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] [LTTE] in the early hours of 2009 has vast portent. The significance is not only for Sri Lanka, its Sinhalese [Buddhist] majority, its large Tamil [Hindu] minority and the country’s variegated spectrum of other religious, ethnic and social groupings.  

It appears likely to lead to the eventual collapse of the most lethal and well organized terrorist movement in the modern world.

Given below is a transcript of the 'Al-Jazeera' 13G live interview with Hon. Minister of Foreign Affairs. This interview was aired on 11th January at 4.00 p.m. 13 GMT 

Introduction: back ground picture on the humanitarian mission and the military operation against the LTTE in the North are shown. 

Murali Reddy in Sri Lanka reporting: 

“It is very difficult to say how long this particular campaign is going to take. One must remember that just to reach Kilinochchi, the Government campaign took twenty months. Mullaitivu, of course, is not going to take that much time but it is going to be a very, very hard effort on the part of Sri Lankan Army to be able to penetrate and eject the leaders out of their hide outs. The military claims to have captured more than, almost, 2500 km areas in the last 20 months of its campaign, but very little has been spoken about the civilians. The civilians have inhabited in these areas and have not come over to the government controlled areas and nobody has precisely estimated about the number of civilians that have actually got stranded or displaced in these areas.” 

234 civilians, among many who were children and adolescents, from the non-liberated areas at Kilinochchi and Mullaittivu, have sought protection with security forces on Sunday (Jan 11).

The civilians were from Pothunakam, Kaddaikadu and Vathiran general areas who are said to have undergone unprecedented hardships under LTTE, Jaffna security sources said. Security officials speaking to defence.lk said that these civilians have made their way towards liberated areas evading LTTE killer squads sent to hunt fleeing people from the non-liberated areas.