Days after the DMK pulled out of the UPA Government and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa barred Sri lankan cricketers from playing in Chennai, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid has rejected the Tamil Nadu Assembly resolution against Colombo.
The resolution sought a separate Eelam for Sri lankan Tamils and said Sri lanka should not be treated as a friendly country by India.
Speaking to CNN-IBN’s Karan Thapar on the Devil’s Advocate prgramme, Khurshid said while the Government was sensitive to Tamil concerns, it won’t accept such demands.
“I mean there is no question of accepting that and that is not the only State that has a stake in this. What about other StatesIJ There are many other Assemblies. Rest of India is not supporting this. If all of India was supporting it, it would be another matter. But if one State supports something we are sensitive to their concerns, but we don’t have to necessarily accept everything they say,” Khurshid said.
On whether the Government was considering to declare the neighbouring country “unfriendly” and place economic sanctions against it, Khurshid said nothing sort of this was on agenda. The Minister also denied any move to consider the UN passing a resolution or encouraging people to pass a resolution to call for a referendum on Eelam.
“I take it on board that there are very strong feelings in Tamil Nadu and not just of other parties, but our own party members have very strong feelings. And we have taken those feelings on board. These feelings are not entirely out of sync with what many people in world think. At same time we do believe that negotiation we have done with Sri lanka, dialogue we have with lanka and effort we have made with lanka is equally important,” Khurshid said.