Sri Lanka

Rone Tempest should be congratulated for his in-depth study of India’s proconsul role in Sri Lanka (Part I, Aug. 4).

In the long history of Sri Lanka the island nation has been invaded 16 times from Indian soil, four times by the powers of the Far East and the West, the last being Britain from which the island received independence in 1948. The country has been occupied for 715 years, the whole island or portion of it in a history of 2,500 years.

Details about the events of the latest Indian subjugation are important since it is going to be more subtle than before.

There would have been only minimal violence in Sri Lanka if not for the fact that Indian government trained, armed and funded the Sri Lankan Tamil insurgents through its Research and Analysis Wing, the Indian equivalent of the CIA. What Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi has done in this accord with the Sri Lankan President Junius Jayewardene was promising to stop that serious breach of international law and disarm the Tamil rebels. The accord was reached without the consent of the insurgents, demonstrating that the Tamils were mere tools in a greater geo-political game.

The Sri Lankan president for the want of much needed peace has traded off a substantial degree of the island-nation’s sovereignty.

While the island-republic and its 16 million people lost a substantial degree of their independence to a regional super power which blatantly used an internal ethnic strife to achieve an imperialistic position, U.S. President Reagan congratulated Jayewardene for signing the accord not because he loves the island-nation but values the friendship of India more and accepts Indian hegemony in South Asia.

WALTER JAYAWARDHANA

President, American

Federation of Sri Lanka Assns.

and Sinhala Defense League

Los Angeles