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| Sunday, 25 May 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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North-East Rehabilitation Fund 'NERF' and the amazing impasse that should never have been by PROF. C. SURIYAKUMARAN
From the beginning, the episode surrounding the issue of non-participation by the LTTE at the coming Tokyo conference would have had all the elements of a Gilbert and Sullivan scenario, but for the enormous implications for us poor citizens here. The LTTE's decision had indeed also the issue of access to the thousands of refugees into their homes and lands for their resettlement and their resuming their cultivations. But NERF was the single major dramatized issue that was shown up as having created an impasse for the LTTE to refuse to attend. Behind all this was a simple issue and matter, which it was amazing had not been found possible - or not willing one does not know - to be addressed by those responsible, to resolve the whole issue. The LTTE's straightforward demand was that, to date, there had been no institutionalised legal, formal structure, to receive and to administer, the considerable funds expected for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the North-East, notwithstanding the welcome offer of the World Bank to be the Administration point for the Funds. Tokyo conference One is amazed that this had created crises that were not merely local, but indeed international, all together threatening not only the holding of the Tokyo Conference but bidding fair to threaten the Peace Process itself. One is amazed that the Government itself had only now thought it fit to take some steps in the direction of legal institutionalization of NERF - for the lack of which the LTTE had been accused of intransigence. I may be pardoned for being personally amazed, with the repeated international experience of handling such responsibility in similar situations. Firstly, in all the very considerable programmes and projects undertaken by the United Nations, in which this writer was also a key player, no programmes, projects or frameworks that also envisaged fundings were concluded without parallel institutional structures, forms or frameworks, as the case may be, that would legally accommodate both the receipts and disbursements of those Funds. The Asian Development Bank, The Asian Clearing Union, The Asian Highway Network, The Asian Coconut Community, The South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), The South Asia Co-operative Environment Programme (SACEP), The Lower Mekong Basin Development Programme, even the Bangkok Trade Agreement, and others, were subject to these well honed procedures. As a former Sinhalese Civil Servant, who was closely associated with me in the United Nations mentioned only the other day here, such a Framework here for us could have been put together in just half a day! One thing that may unfortunately be said against such an arrangement for us, is that we can never be proud of the way we have (a) failed to utilize our full funds received all these years and (b) not accounted it seems for at least some slices of those Funds that should have been duly expended, or in holdings with the authorities! Any normal observer could not also fail to be concerned on these likelihoods in NERF. On the use of the impending NERF inflows, one is constrained to emphasize the imperative immediate need to get away from standard 'officialese' - away from 'Desk Plannings' or from processing Data Sheets sent in by Kachcheries and lower level Offices, and to establish clear, Peoples Based Units Regionwide that will throw up, with guidance, the sum of the Programmes on the needed Rehabilitation and Reconstruction. Without treading on official ground, I would suggest a well knit Administrative Group at the top, composed of the likes of, say, Shelton Wanasinghe, Ponna Wignaraja and another on the Government side, along with three nominees of the LTTE, as a Unit for the purpose. While on the subject, it may not be out of place to refer to the episode of the Washington Conference - which obviously the LTTE could not have attended due to well known US Visa regulations - and the little political storm that it created. Here again, if one may speak with one's past Internnational experience, whoever on our side may have been handling this matter could have easily helped in the arrangement of such a Conference, as I said recently elsewhere, in one of those beautiful Caribbean Islands; or for that matter, arranged an Opening Working Conference in Washington, enabling participation of all countries that may not otherwise sit together with the LTTE, followed by a substantive Concluding Session in the neighbouring Caribbean venue! trivialities These are all mentioned since the great issues of rehabilitation and reconstruction and, later, of the bold drama of development itself, are yet before us; and we should learn not to be tripping over trivialities already. In a concluding thought, I would most earnestly recommend, not simply because of the current massive flood destructions in the South, but because of their constant recurrence within this writer's long memory, that a South East Reconstruction Fund (SERF) be installed as a continuing mechanism, with legal framework, for massive International Fundings support that will regenerate and buttress the entire topography of the South - West and South Regions, its catchments, river flows, reservoirs, forests and human settlements. We are sure that the entire country would support this. |
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