UN’s Feltman visits Sri Lanka to push a Federal Constitution
By Daya Gamage
(Courtesy of Asian Tribune)
Jeffrey Feltman, Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs, the second most senior position in the United Nations and the coordinator of the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, was on an official visit to Sri Lanka July 19-21.
He met with government officials, leadership of the Tamil National Alliance, diplomatic community and civil society activists, and travelled to the Eastern Province. He had a dialogue with Sri Lanka’s foreign minister Ravi Karunanayake.
Mr. Feltman last visited Sri Lanka in February 2015, had wide ranging talks with the newly-installed Sirisena-Wickremasinghe administration, Tamil political leaders and the Chief Minister of the Northern Province Retired Justice Vigneshwaran.
Mr. Feltman in May 2012 switched from being a US Assistant Secretary of State to UN Under Secretary- General for Political Affairs. The US essentially owns this UN position (US Lynn Pascoe was Feltman’s predecessor).
As Under-Secretary-General and head of the Department of Political Affairs, Mr. Feltman advises the UN Secretary-General on peace and security issues globally, while overseeing “good offices” initiatives and field-based political missions carrying out peacemaking, preventive diplomacy and peace-building activities. He also oversees the United Nations electoral assistance provided to dozens of its member states each year.
When Feltman visited Colombo in February 2015 his agenda at that time was: “As requested by Sri Lanka, the United Nations is committed to assisting in the process of addressing credibly and thoroughly accountability and reconciliation,” declared during his visit to Colombo.
This time, the head of the Department of Political Affairs in the UN, Feltman came at a time Sri Lanka was in the process of constitution making. He has a track record of promoting ethnic enclaves in countries on the lines of federalism encouraging nations to establish ethnically-based semi-autonomous regions.
Since Jeffrey Feltman’s February 2015 visit to Sri Lanka, there were two significant visits: U.S. Permanent Representative for the UN Samantha Power, Obama administration’s foreign policy advocate was in Sri Lanka November 21-23 in 2015; In January 2016, American multi billionaire and promoter of global liberal projects George Soros was in Colombo January 2016.
Both visits are significant as both of them, since 2012, have been direct participants of UN-Department of Political Affairs- initiated ‘promotion of federalism’ in Third World nations envisaged to bifurcate nations on ethnic lines. Feltman is now the head of the UN Department of Political Affairs.
The two visits are even further interesting when Colombo has an American diplomatic envoy – Atul Keshap – who is a strong believer of a federal structure in Sri Lanka. He has gone on record advocating the system.
It is in the heat of these developments that Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs of the United Nations visited Sri Lanka July 19-21 to have wide-ranging talks.
The UN, since 2012, has held number of closed-door meetings and seminars at which the partition of UN member states has been discussed. Most of the meetings have been held under the direction of the UN Inter-agency Framework for Coordination on Preventive Action (the Framework Team or FT). The FT is directly under the control of Under- Secretary-General (Political Affairs).
The process in 2012 commenced during Under Secretary-General (Political) B. Lynn Pascoe’s period. He retired from his senior state department position at the behest of Washington to take over the position.
The FT has also trained certain activists around the world, particularly in developing and other countries with pro-western governments, to use “the system” to effect change.
When the process commenced in 2012, Sri Lanka, apart from Nepal, was also a target for the identity federalism engineers. During the 2008 presidential campaign, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama received large campaign donations from front groups for the Tamil Tigers. As a way of thanking the Tigers for their support, the Obama administration, Soros, and the International Peace Institute of Norway have been pushing for a federal system in Sri Lanka that would create a Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim federation.
A widely-read blog itmakessenseblog.com noted in a 2012 report that although South Korean Ban Ki-moon was the Secretary General of the UN, his most important deputies represent the interests of NATO and its allies. The Undersecretary General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe, a former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia and Malaysia (predecessor of Feltman) was thought by many UN staffers to have links to the CIA.
It is with this scenario initiating federal structure in many Third World small nations on ethnic lines that US State Department officials declared the best political solution to Sri Lanka’s ‘National Issues’ is serious devolution of power with a federal structure.
(This writer’s recently published book – Tamil Tigers’ Debt to America: U.S. Foreign-Policy Adventurism & Sri Lanka’s Dilemma – extensively documents this significant trajectory)
It is with this scenario initiating federal structure in many Third World small nations on ethnic lines that US State Department officials declared the best political solution to Sri Lanka’s ‘National Issues’ is serious devolution of power with a federal structure.
The incumbent Under-Secretary-General Jeffrey Feltman is well within the process of promoting federal structure of government in many Third World small nations such as Sri Lanka.
The incumbent American ambassador to Sri Lanka Atul Keshap has gone on record his authoritative declaration that Sri Lanka needs a federal structure to redress minority Tamil grievances. Previously, he was working very closely on Sri Lankan issues with Robert Blake when he was the assistant secretary of the South Asian Bureau. Mr. Blake was US envoy in Colombo during the period the Sri Lanka military undertook the final assault (April-May 2009) on the Tamil Tiger movement. Atul Keshap, as Blake’s assistant, travelled to Sri Lanka on two occasions, one in June 2014 and the other in February 2015.
Mr. Atul Keshap, not once but several occasions in the same interview with a Sri Lankan newspaper –Daily Mirror – highlighted the importance of establishing a federal structure in Sri Lanka; he was obviously pronouncing a policy plank of the United States Government already determined at some high level.
At this June 20, 2014 interview Mr. Keshap told what the United States believed in saying: “the U.S. believes in a very bright future for this country and it believes that Sri Lanka has the potential in terms of human capital, in terms of resources, in terms of geographic location, in terms of having secured peace after a very brutal civil war – a country connected to the entire world. A country that is not the subject of UN Human Rights Council Resolutions because it has perfected its democracy and perfected its respect for human rights. A country that has created a meaningful formula for devolution of power and federalism, to ensure coherence among the various regions. A country that is reconciled, peaceful, and prosperous”.
Jeffrey Feltman, who had a thirty-year career in the U.S. Department of State, and a professional who is committed to Washington’s foreign policy agenda, through the UNHRC of which his Political Office in UN has scrutinizing authority – working closely with his onetime state department colleagues – one such being Ambassador Atul Keshap – was obviously advocating the Government of Sri Lanka the importance of devolving political-economic-law enforcement powers to the peripheral provinces having the minority Tamil issues in mind to establish a federal structure to complete the process his Department of Political Affairs in UN started in 2012 with his most recent tour in Sri Lanka July 19-21.
(The Asian Tribune thanks some of the former officials in the U.S. Department of State for providing some enlightened thoughts to this political note)
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