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Clinton warns Sri Lanka over war |
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Tuesday, 29 November 2005 |
Former US president Bill Clinton has warned Sri Lanka that the tsunami reconstruction effort will be wasted if the country returns to war, writes BBC News, Tuesday, 29 November 2005 at http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Forwarded by Budhi Mulyawan 291105.
He was speaking during a visit to the country in his role as UN special tsunami envoy.
Last year's tsunami killed nearly 31,000 people in Sri Lanka.
Meanwhile the aid agency, Oxfam, has criticised the pace of rebuilding in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, saying that it is too slow.
Oxfam said that both countries - the worst-hit by the tsunami - had to provide more appropriate land on which to build permanent shelters for the tsunami survivors.
The Asian tsunami killed more than 200,000 people in 13 countries - 130,000 in Indonesia and 31,000 in Sri Lanka.
'Civil conflict'
Mr Clinton toured parts of the eastern and north-eastern coast of Sri Lanka on Tuesday.
Earlier, speaking in Colombo, Mr Clinton said the country had achieved "real progress" since the 26 December disaster.
"Ninety per cent of children are back in school, epidemics have been prevented and transitional shelter has been provided to almost all internally displaced people," he said.
But Mr Clinton emphasised that all this work would be "reversed" if the ceasefire between the Tamil Tiger rebels and the government failed to hold.
"Any recovery progress achieved this year will be quickly reversed if Sri Lanka returns to civil conflict."
Mr Clinton held talks with the country's new President, Mahinda Rajapakse.
Mr Rajapakse took office having pledged to take a hard line against the Tigers.
Mr Rajapakse praised Mr Clinton for his involvement in tsunami recovery.
"Your personal involvement in the post-tsunami reconstruction efforts of our country has been a great source of strength to all of us," Mr Rajapakse said, his spokesman told reporters.
This is Mr Clinton's third visit to the country since last December's tsunami.
'Buffer zones'
Oxfam has criticised the slow pace of work in tsunami recovery in Sri Lanka.
It said the Sri Lankan government had made land available but in some cases the land being offered was inappropriate - such as fishing communities being offered land too far away from the sea.
Along the Sri Lankan shoreline many destroyed homes have not been rebuilt because they were in areas now deemed to be 'buffer zones' where building is prohibited.
"Thousands of permanent houses have already been built for tsunami survivors but until new land is provided for those made landless, the rebuilding process will be too slow," Oxfam's director, Barbara Stocking, said.
As for Indonesia, the group said the government had not got policies in place to provide new land to the landless.
Mr Clinton is due to tour Indonesia on Wednesday.
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