Breakaway faction of TNA accuses it of India appeasement

A breakaway faction of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in Sri Lanka has accused the main Tamil grouping of following a policy of "appeasement" towards India and the West.
"They (TNA) work having their eyes closed with both Indian and US governments," Gajendra Kumar Ponnambalam, the leader of Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF), a one time ally of the TNA, said in the northern town of Vavuniya yesterday.
The TNPF met to discuss the proposed UN Human Rights Council resolution on Sri Lanka to be taken up in Geneva in March.
The US is to move its third resolution in as many years urging expeditious action from Colombo to achieve national reconciliation and to address concerns of human rights abuses during the final military battle in a nearly three decades-long civil war with the LTTE.

Ponnambalam said his party would attend the Geneva meeting independent of the TNA.
TNPF represents a hardline approach to Tamil issues as compared to the more moderate position of the TNA.

Ponnambalam said the international community must recognise that the Tamil people had been subject to genocide at different times of the conflict.
Ponnambalam, commenting on a possible international war crimes investigation focusing on the last phase of the war with the LTTE, said the international community must probe the problems faced by the Tamils since 1948 and not just the last phase of the war.
Such a probe should also be expanded to invent a mechanism to redress the grievances of the Tamils.

"There needs to be a programme to work out a political solution to meet Tamil aspirations with a clear time frame," he said.