President Premadasa of Sri Lanka have told a Sinhala audience recently —.in a bilingual flourish — that while he was not prepared to concede Eelam, but short of it he was prepared to give “Elam” (all, in Tamil). That we think is a good beginning. ‘After all, one should be pragmatic enough to understand that no ruler anywhere can concede anything that is not in his power to give. New nation states are never given, they are always taken. ‘General Yahya Khans and Bhutto’s could not have given Bangladesh; it was taken from them. Premadasa also cannot be unconscious of the dramatic development that are taking place around the globe today.
Sweeping changes in world map: The winds of change are blowing with such devastating effect that the smug assumptions of yesteryear are being blown away. Soviet leader Gorbachev might not want to let go his hold on the Baltic states, but the leaders of those states are busy talking to President Bush. Eyebrows were raised in western capitals when Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin arrived in Moscow the other day, the first visit by the senior-most Chinese leader after the late Mao Temong met Khrushchev in 1957. In Yugoslavia, Croatia has warned that it would withdraw from the union if Serbia blocks its nominee for Presidency. The long-forgotten question of Chinese occupied Tibet is being revived by the Americans. Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani says that he and ‘Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had agreed to key points in a proposal to end the rebellion against the: Baghdad regime. Israel says that the gap between the Jewish state and the Arab states had narrowed. In India, whichever government comes to power, its DI would not only have to contend with hitherto unexperienced domestic compulsions, but would also be compelled to review is stances in external relations, not excluding the Tamil question in Sri Lanka. In short, new permutations and new combinations are emerging in inter-state relations all over the world. The oft-repeated truism that no country has permanent friends or permanent enemies, but only permanent interests, takes in a heightened relevance in the light of all these current developments (Tamil Nation May 15).
