US-LED MISSION TO HELP TAMIL CIVILIANS IN MULLATIVU!!!

US taps Delhi on Lanka foray

WASHINGTON, Sunday: The Obama administration will sound out Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon tomorrow on India’s support for a US-led mission to Sri Lanka to evacuate nearly 200,000 Tamil civilians trapped inside territory controlled by the LTTE with precariously declining stocks of food and medicine.

“We had some people there to look at the situation to identify what the possibilities may be.

We will do whatever we can to help these people,” South and Central Asian Affairs Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher told a group of South Asian journalists. The plan to be put before Mr. Menon, who will have a series of meetings here with officials of the new US administration from tomorrow, is for a marine expeditionary brigade attached to the US Pacific Command (PACOM) to go into Sri Lanka with the support of the US Navy and Air Force, according to American sources privy to the plan.

A team from PACOM was in Colombo a fortnight ago to discuss the outlines of the plan with the Sri Lankan Army, these sources told ‘The Telegraph’.

At the time of the PACOM team’s visit, the US State Department sent James Moore, deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Colombo to the Jaffna peninsula for an independent assessment of the situation there.

Mr. Moore’s report is said to have persuaded Hillary Clinton’s state department to line up behind the idea of a US-led evacuation of Tamils.

If the mission comes about, it will be the first time that the Obama administration will flex its muscles overseas in a new show of American power.

The initiative is expected to have mixed reactions here, especially among groups opposed to US military action, which backed Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

But spin masters of the Obama administration have quietly begun work here to describe any such military mission as a “coalition humanitarian task force”.

However, if the humanitarian task force lands in Sri Lanka before the LTTE lays down arms as demanded by Colombo or without agreement from the Tamil Tigers, who may fire on the task force, its mission will be tantamount to an invasion leading to possible US casualties.

Any request by the Americans for Indian support for a US-led military mission in Sri Lanka is likely to put Mr. Menon in a spot.

There are serious differences in the Indian government on how to deal with the mounting crisis in its southern backyard with the National Security Adviser, M. K. Narayanan, opposed to any support for military action.

Mr. Narayanan’s main concern is possible fallout on the Lok Sabha elections as the result of an evacuation without the explicit approval of the LTTE and any consequent spilling of blood.

The Telegraph