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Kumaratunga's speech at SAARC brilliant

Josy Joseph in Kathmandu

The handshake between Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee might have hogged the limelight on the opening day of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit, but there were other interesting developments too.

Chief among them was a brilliant speech on terrorism by Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who said every nation in the region, except Maldives and Bhutan, "has seen the rise of terrorist movements" in the last three decades.

"We have to join our hands, at least now, more honestly and with more dedication, to fight the wave of terrorist politics that is sweeping across our region. To do this, it may not be sufficient to say, that we will hunt down the perpetrators of terror and their allies. We must attempt to understand the deep-rooted causes of this most unnatural, de-humanising phenomenon very specific to the 20th century," she said.

Kumaratunga pointed out that in today's context "the demand for the rectification of injustice is with acts of violence, which by itself raises issues of ethics in terrorist violence".

It was not terrorists who divided Ireland, caused the Israel-Palestine problem... they were not the ones who imposed white rule in South Africa, "nor did the terrorists overthrow the duly elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile", the Sri Lankan president pointed out.

"The terrorists did not separate India and Pakistan and create the tragedy of Kashmir. To come closer home, neither did the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam nor the armed Tamil militants create the circumstances for the marginalisation of the minority communities in Sri Lanka," she said.

"Violence -- social, political or physical -- perpetrated by the state or the agents of the state, against other states or its own peoples is the womb of terrorism, humiliation its cradle and continued revenge by the State becomes the mother's milk and nourishment for terrorism," Kumaratunga, who stepped down as the chairperson of SAARC, said.

She said it was only after the September 11 attacks that the "developed world, the community of the rich and powerful countries woke up" to terrorism.

At least now the entire world must unite to understand that the "modern expression of frustration, of destroyed hopes will not be contained within the boundaries of one nation, but will spill over in the most horrendous and terrifying fashion" around the globe, Kumaratunga said

Progress was being made in Sri Lanka to find ways to end the LTTE problem, which arose out of the marginalisation of the Tamils, she said.

"We need to employ constructively the great energies of these young people and their immense commitment towards change in their societies," she said of those who had taken up arms. "For this we need visionary leaders", who radically alter the "present distribution of wealth and power within nations and between nations".

The 20th century has "bred and reaped the fruits of this great tragedy", she said, calling for radical attempts to deal with terrorism in its entirety.

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