CRISIS IN INDIAN FOREIGN POLICY REASON FORTHEIRYESVOTE AT UNHRC:DULLES

The Indian government was a shaky coalition comprising a number of constituent parties who had different policies and political agendas

For the first time in its history, India had to confront a crisis in its foreign policy and the Congress led government would have collapsed if it took a different stand on the resolution against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC in Geneva on Thursday, Youth Affairs and Skills Development Minister Dulles Alahapperuma said yesterday.

He said the Indian government was a shaky coalition comprising a number of constituent parties who had different policies and political agendas. Therefore it is inevitable that the government had to succumb to their pressure if the Congress led government was to survive. The Congress party won only 206 seats at the 2009 General Election in the 545 seat Lok Sabha and the government survives on the support of the DMK and the Trinamool Congress who have 18 and 19 seats respectively.minister Alahapperuma said that 23 out of 47 members in the UNHRC have not supported the anti Sri Lanka resolution and that in itself was a victory for Sri Lanka. A resolution brought against Syria in the UN General assembly on the other hand had received 108 votes from the 192 member countries, he said. A majority of the countries that supported the resolution, especially the western countries, exerted tremendous pressure on President Rajapaksa to stop the war and enter into a dialogue with the LTTE. It was those same countries that attempted to airlift Prabhakaran and top LTTE leaders to a third country with the aim of continuing the Eelam war from outside Sri Lanka. Having failed in their attempts they had wanted to get back at us and President Rajapaksa. That is why all these treacherous acts have been perpetrated by them against us,” he stressed.