Pallone tips for peace in Sri Lanka

By Greg Heffernan

BEVERLY HILLS: Voicing concern over the recent conflicts in Sri Lanka, Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone of New Jersey’s sixth district was hosted by the IAFC in the VIP room of the newly opened Chakra Restaurant Saturday night. “The President of Sri Lanka was in New York at the UN last week and I met him for an hour.

I told him the perception among a lot of my colleagues in Congress is that neither he nor the Tamils want peace. I said it was important for the Sri Lanka government to send a signal that they don’t really want another war. So he said over the next few weeks they were going to make it quite clear that they wanted to negotiate that they don’t want another war. But right now it’s not looking so good,” he said.

With regard to other issues in South Asia, the Congressman showed a clear concern that Pakistan is not really helping in the war on terrorism but merely paying lip service in the hunt for terrorism, referring to a recent border agreement between Afghanistan and Pakistan which will seem to encourage cross boarder insurgency.

Pallone, a ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee graciously fielded a plethora of questions from journalists and IAFC friends ranging from US/India foreign relations to potential candidates for the Democratic presidential ticket in 2008.

Pallone’s comments on the current Bush Administration’s foreign policy seem to echo a growing dissatisfaction with the Iraq war and the US’s 400 billion dollar a year military budget. When Professor Ram Roy, emeritus professor of Cal State Northridge Department of Political Science, offered an analogy of a “withdrawal dilemma” for the Iraq War that had similarities to the ultimate withdrawal after the Vietnam War, Pallone agreed: “What is the difference between Iraq and Vietnam?

We pulled out of Vietnam and declared it a victory, which it wasn’t. So what if we do that in Iraq? I think that our president or the next president has to stand up and say the same thing and we leave,” he said candidly. Pallone is convinced that if after another two years President Bush hasn’t pulled out, the next US President will have to do so.

“The American people want us to leave. We need to redeploy out of Iraq and keep our troops in neighbouring countries like Kuwait as quick as possible like in six months to a year,” he said, pointing out that America didn’t send troops to Lebanon recently because they are deployed on America’s borders, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq. “Frankly we don’t have the troops to send right now,” he said.

When asked if an American withdrawal might be a sign of victory for terrorists, Pallone felt it ultimately didn’t matter because the enemy will be critical no matter what the US does.

On a host of other topics Pallone said he did expect Hilary Clinton to run for president and felt that the Democrats had a better chance of taking a majority of seats in the Congressional House than in the US Senate. He bemoaned the Bush Administration’s policies of giving major tax credits to the rich which are supposed to encourage reinvestment but apparently are not.

“As a matter of fact the tax codes favour more investment outside the US,” said Pallone, “and that’s a problem. People are not investing in us. The future is in those countries that invest in their young people, and industry, that’s what’s going to make a country great in five or 10 years. And we’re just not doing it.
“Pallone pointed out that the cost of education is up 46 percent in the last six years in America, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to afford higher education. “Scholarships used to cover 75 to 80 percent of college fees and now it’s only 30 percent,” he related with remorse. “It’s hard for our kids to afford to go to college. We also have a nursing shortage in this country. We should be training nurses and offering better nursing programs in our colleges instead of importing nurses from all over the world.”

(India Post News Service)