Poll to Impact Stand on Lanka at UN: Khurshid
By P K Balachandran - COLOMBO
Published: 14th February 2014
Indian Minister of External Affairs Salman Khurshid.
Indian Minister of External Affairs Salman Khurshid has said that the Indian parliamentary elections this year will cast a shadow on India’s stand on the Sri Lankan human rights issue at the March session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva.
“We are in an election mood. In election time it is not always easy to explain to people. There is no time and no willingness to listen to things. And lots of people get excited and sometimes get upset,” Khurshid told a group of Lankan journalists who called on him in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Pressed to state India’s stand on the United States-sponsored anti-Lankan resolution at the UNHRC, Khurshid said that Lanka should do things that will enable India to help it. However, Khurshid said that Sri Lanka has to realise that the international community is taking up the human rights question in the island nation in a certain historical context, a context which cannot be wished away. Pointing out that Lankans are “over-sensitive” while the world is “over-active”, he stressed the need for moderation.
Khurshid appealed to Lanka not to isolate itself. While everyone realises that a 30-year conflict cannot be resolved overnight, Lanka cannot take 30 years to bring about reconciliation, he said. “Sri Lankans will have to find means to satisfy the world, while convincing the world that it needs more time to find its own solution at a pace and in a time frame convenient to it,” Khurshid said.
