WASHINGTON: Sri Lanka cannot be pressured by the international community to bring about a political solution to its long-running separatist conflict, its foreign secretary T.B. Kohona said.

He said the government was searching for a political solution broadly acceptable to all the stakeholders while continuing to encourage Tamil separatists to renounce violence and enter the democratic process.

“The government invites the international community to support this approach and to understand that you cannot have a quick-fix solution,” Kohona said in a talk at Georgetown University in Washington on Tuesday.

“A political settlement in a democracy has to be carefully and patiently negotiated with all the stakeholders,” he said.

Kohona called “blind critics” those who argue that the government is pursuing a military solution to the Sri Lanka conflict, which has already claimed more than 60,000 lives since 1972.

“This is far from the truth,” he said, adding however that Colombo’s commitment to a political solution “does not imply appeasement of terror.” Sri Lanka is under pressure from key foreign backers not to pursue the military option, as Colombo steps up its fight against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) while at the same time insisting that its operations have been defensive and humanitarian in nature.

The United States, seen as more sympathetic to Sri Lanka’s fight against the LTTE, which the US has designated a terrorist organisation, has urged Colombo against pressing ahead with a military drive.

The European Union and neighbouring India have also warned against an all-out military campaign.

Kohona referred to a Norwegian-brokered 2002 ceasefire, which fell apart following an escalation of fighting over the last two years.

The LTTE, he charged, “deliberately misused” the opportunity provided by the truce to prepare for further violence.

Citing the Northern Ireland situation as an example, he said that a truce must be accompanied by decommissioning of weapons, the laying down of arms over a period step-by-step and under proper supervision.

“A ceasefire or a cessation of hostilities is by its very nature fragile if it stands by itself in a vacuum, if it is not linked to a process which enables substantive issues to be addressed,” he said.—AFP