Sri Lankan government has announced that it is not going to participate at the proposed summit talks in Britain to bring about good will and understanding among the warring parties in Sri Lanka.

Although there was speculation that Sri Lanka will reject the offer, what is surprising is that the Sri Lankan government has turned it down long before a formal or official invitation.

It is crystal clear that the Sri Lankan government which acts on a military agenda will hardly agree to attend any summit that has an agenda for peace and peaceful negotiation. The government spokesman has already informed that the Sri Lanka will not bother about the proposed summit.

The Sri Lankan government has conveyed a message to the British Parliamentary Representative Group through this. The message is not to poke their nose into Lankan affairs. The message is to ask them to mind their own business.

What next? That is the question now. The response of the Sri Lankan government is a slap on the face of the APRG. Will they, who made a hue and cry over the human rights violations in Sri Lanka, the plight of he Tamils and the need for peace on the floor of the Parliament, be dumped founded or will they make a meaningful contribution?.

At this juncture, it is our bounden duty to throw up certain pertinent facts before APRG makes up its mind.

We would like to remind the British leadership that Britain is in a way responsible for the derailment for the peace process that commenced 5 years ago since it acted in an irresponsible manner.

Tamils and Sinhalese have lived in Sri Lanka as two different entities with different languages, cultures, in two different traditional homelands since historic times.

The Portuguese and the Dutch, who conquered the country and recognized the two distinct regions, their culture, their regional integrity, ruled them as two distinct administrative units.

It was Britain, who acquired these regions from the Dutch, unified both into one administrative unit for their administrative convenience without any regard or respect for the uniqueness and the entities of both nations. There by, Britain imposed a unitary form of government in the country.

In this way, Britain paved the way for a system of governance which placed the destiny of the minority communities in the hands of the majority Sinhala community. Thus it laid the foundation for the ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka. It was Britain that made a historic blunder by shattering the regional integrity and sovereignty of the Tamil home land.

What is more, when the peace efforts began in 2002 the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, as sole representatives of the Tamil people, were determined to work for peace as equal partners. It was Britain that was in the forefront to persuade the European Union comprising about 25 countries to declare the LTTE as a terrorist outfit and there by deprived the LTTE being an equal partner in the peace process. As a result, Britain became responsible for the derailment of the peace process.

Therefore, we wish to point out to the leaders of Britain and the British Parliamentarians that Britain has to make an atonement in view of the historic blunders it has committed over the years.

An English translation of the Editorial in The Sudar Oli, a Tmil daily, based in Colombo

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