Bumpy Landings for New Diplomatic Arrivals
Ambassadors come and go in this town, although when they represent heavy-hitting nations, there’s always a little more attention paid to the new additions. Such is the case with crucial — if testy — U.S. allies such as China, the European Union and Turkey, all of which have new envoys coming to Washington. But given recent friction with the U.S., these diplomatic arrivals are attracting a little more attention than usual as they face the task of smoothing over rough patches in bilateral relations.
 After five years in Washington, Chinese Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong is leaving at a time of heightened tensions with the United States over the recent visit of the Dalai Lama, trade disputes, cyber-spying charges lobbed at China, and a U.S. arms package to Taiwan. All eyes will now be on Zhou’s reported replacement, Zhang Yesui, currently Beijing’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York.
Meanwhile, after the departure of popular European Union Ambassador John Bruton, a former Irish prime minister, the EU has appointed a top Brussels diplomat, João Vale de Almeida, to head its delegation in Washington — where the envoy’s top priority will most likely be shoring up an alliance that many say simply isn’t a priority for the administration, especially in light of President Barack Obama’s decision to skip the annual U.S.-EU summit in May.
Both the EU and Chinese envoys are set to arrive in the coming weeks. Turkey’s new ambassador, Namik Tan, formally took up his post in mid-February, only to be recalled back to Ankara two weeks later when the Turkish government became incensed by a resolution passed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee recognizing the so-called Armenian “genocide.”
It all means that these ambassadors will have their work cut out for them in their new postings. Like Turkey, China has used its diplomatic connections to protest U.S. policy. On Feb. 19, Beijing summoned U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman to denounce Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, arguing that the visit by the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader “runs against the repeated commitments by the U.S. government that the U.S. recognizes Tibet as part of China and gives no support to ‘Tibet independence.’”
Beijing also reportedly delayed the departure of Ambassador Zhou in Washington to voice its displeasure over a $6.4 billion arms sales to Taiwan, which China views as a breakaway territory. Zhou also took some subtle parting shots at the administration in one of his last interviews before leaving, telling China’s Xinhua News Agency that the two countries “should respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity so as to ensure the healthy and stable development of bilateral relations.”
Yet the tone was friendly and optimistic at Zhou’s official farewell reception, which drew 400 guests to the Chinese Embassy on Feb. 16, including U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg, who in early March headed to Beijing in an apparent attempt to further mend ties. Chinese President Hu Jintao may also visit the White House in April when Obama hosts an international nuclear security summit, although Beijing hasn’t yet confirmed his attendance.
 Nevertheless, fundamental foreign policy differences won’t be easy to overcome. China — as one of five veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council — hasn’t warmed to the renewed U.S. push for sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program. Interestingly, the man taking the helm in Washington, Zhang Yesui, has been at the center of China’s efforts for a diplomatic solution to the Iran standoff as Beijing’s envoy to the United Nations.
While China undeniably commands the attention of U.S. policymakers, the EU seems to be having the opposite problem, according to some observers. Former EU Ambassador John Bruton wrote on his blog that Obama’s decision to skip a major U.S.-EU summit in Madrid this May “will deeply disappoint many Europeans.”
Indeed, with the administration consumed by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as domestic issues like health care and the economy, many EU watchers say America’s relationship with the 27-nation alliance has been relegated to the sidelines.
 That leaves the EU’s new envoy to the U.S., João Vale de Almeida, with the job of reinvigorating trans-Atlantic cooperation, especially on thorny matters such as climate change and contributing troops to Afghanistan. Vale de Almeida, a longtime aide to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, will also have to navigate a new EU bureaucracy following last year’s ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, which aims to streamline the bloc and strengthen its foreign service. So far though, the treaty has left some Americans wondering who exactly is in charge at the EU, which will have a new full-time president and foreign affairs chief, though the system of a rotating six-month EU presidency remains in place for now.
The 53-year-old Portuguese career diplomat knows the EU system quite well. Prior to his appointment to Washington, Vale de Almeida was director-general for external relations, before which he served as head of President Barroso’s private office for five years.
Still, some are worried that Vale de Almeida is an EU insider who’s a virtual unknown to the outside world. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt for instance has publicly questioned his experience for such a high-profile post, also complaining about the closed-door nomination process for Vale de Almeida.
 No one has been questioning the Washington credentials of Turkey’s new ambassador, Nam&Mac245;k Tan, who’s served here twice before, as first secretary of the Turkish Embassy from 1991 to 1995 and as counselor from 1997 to 2001. But this time, after arriving in mid-February, Tan was promptly recalled back to Ankara for “consultations” in reaction to the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s narrow passage of a resolution labeling the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 as genocide.
Perhaps no other issue stirs the Armenian or Turkish national collective quite like the Ottoman-era mass killings, and each country has lobbied hard to have their version of events accepted as the historical truth. Ankara says the deaths occurred amid the chaos of World War I and the demise of the Ottoman Empire, not by a systemic campaign of genocide. And nothing riles anti-American sentiment in Turkey more than being compared to the likes of Adolf Hitler by the U.S. government.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan quickly condemned the House vote, warning that it could jeopardize U.S. relations and the recent rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia. A similar nonbinding resolution passed by a wider margin in 2007, although lobbying efforts by the Bush administration — worried about infuriating a key ally — successfully stalled the resolution.
That same dilemma now confronts the Obama administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton belatedly told Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) that the vote would threaten relations, to no avail. It’s now up to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to determine if the resolution goes to the House floor. (California is home to a sizeable American Armenian population.)
In the meantime, Turkey will be closely watching Obama — who as a candidate called the killings a genocide but hasn’t used that description as president — undoubtedly reminding the U.S. president of Turkey’s strategic importance in the region, particularly with regards to Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.
And for now at least, Ankara’s man in Washington will remain in Ankara. Shortly after landing in Istanbul, Tan told reporters that after his consultations, “I will return when it is deemed fit.”
Other new appointments in town — which have gone a bit more smoothly — include Rigoberto Gauto Vielman as Paraguay’s new ambassador, Daniel Ohene Agyekum of Ghana, Mauro Luiz Iecker Vieira of Brazil, and Kim Beazley of Australia.
 Incidentally, Beazley — a former leader of Australia’s Labor Party — did run into some bumps just two days into the job, though they had nothing to do with politics. He underwent surgery on both knees after falling on some ice outside the ambassador’s residence. As a result, Beazley had to present his credentials to President Obama — who’s set to visit Australia later this month — from his wheelchair, joking that he would “channel” former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was also wheelchair-bound. Australia’s ambassador also credited his “nurse” — and wife — Susie for helping him during his recovery, which is expected to last a few weeks.
Top photo, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg, right, toasts Ambassador of China Zhou Wenzhong at a farewell reception for Ambassador Zhou held at the Chinese Embassy. Zhou, who has served in Washington for the past five years, will be replaced by Zhang Yesui (pictured below and on the front page), China’s permanent representative to the United Nations and U.N. Security Council president for January — who is seen above briefing the media following the Security Council’s unanimous decision to send an additional 3, 500 U.N. troops and police officers to Haiti following the earthquake in Port-au-Prince.
UN Photo / Eskinder Debebe
Bottom photo, Kim Beazley of Australia presents his credentials to President Obama in a wheelchair following knee surgery as the result of a fall on the ice outside the ambassador’s residence.
Photo: White House Photo by Samantha Appleton
Chile Begins Post-Quake Cleanup
A natural disaster isn’t exactly what a departing ambassador imagines dealing with the last few days on the job, but José Goñi is spending his final two weeks as Chile’s ambassador in Washington doing just that. On March 5, the ambassador held a joint press conference with D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty in front of the Chilean Embassy to give an update on the powerful 8.8-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that ravaged Chile’s southern coast on Feb. 27.
 Goñi noted that the earthquake — which struck within 25 miles of Concepción, Chile’s second-largest city — impacted the country’s most populated areas, where 80 percent of the people live. In addition, more than 200 aftershocks have rattled the region, many registering over 5.0 on the Richter scale, and several with a magnitude greater than 6.0 last Friday alone.
Death tolls have varied, with the initial estimates of 800 dead being reduced. As of March 6, the Chilean government said that 452 bodies have been identified (though many missing remain).
Strict building codes in the seismically active country have been credited with keeping the death tolls from climbing much higher. To put things into perspective, the earthquake in Chile was far larger than the Jan. 12 quake that hit Haiti, yet more than 200,000 people died in that impoverished Caribbean nation.
Chileans have taken the lessons of past disasters to heart. The largest quake in recorded history — with a magnitude of 9.5 — took place in Chile in 1960. This latest tremor ranks as the world’s fifth-largest on record and the country’s worst in 50 years. Today, Chile has become an increasingly prosperous, politically stable nation with a flexible free-market economy and per-capita GDP of more than $14,000, all of which make it better able to rebuild.
Despite the relatively low death toll compared to Haiti, the ambassador pointed out that his country of 16.8 million has suffered a tremendous amount of damage. Some half a million homes have been completely destroyed and 1.5 million others affected. The economic damage is estimated to cost anywhere from $15 billion to $30 billion. To give a sense of the destruction, Goñi said that if a comparable earthquake had hit the United States, 240 million Americans out of a total population of 300 million would have been impacted.
To that end, the embassy has set up two bank accounts where contributions can be made (see details below). Chile has also requested international assistance in the form of field hospitals, temporary bridges, satellite phones, water-purification systems, medical equipment and other aid. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who visited Concepcion over the weekend, pledged $10 million in emergency relief, and a telethon over the weekend raised almost $60 million.
Though highly popular, outgoing Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has been criticized for not initially asking for international assistance and for not deploying troops fast enough to prevent looting. Visiting two small towns over the weekend, Bachelet, a former political prisoner, dismissed accusations that she hesitated turning to the army given the country’s military dictatorship past, telling a group of survivors that “we have not stopped to rest a single minute. But complete recovery is going to take time.”
That task will now go to Chile’s new president, Sebastián Piñera, who assumes office on Thursday. Bachelet’s administration has been preparing earthquake assessments for Piñera, one of Chile’s wealthiest investors and the first conservative politician to win the presidency since the fall of military strongman Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
The shift in power also means that Goñi will be wrapping up his term in Washington this week. A political appointee, Goñi is no stranger to the foreign service, having previously served as Chile’s minister of defense, as well as ambassador to Mexico (2006-07), Italy (2000-04) and Sweden (1997-2000).
At the press conference, he thanked D.C. Mayor Fenty and the city for “their support and solidarity in these difficult moments.”
“It is remarkable the way in which Washington, D.C., embraces a diversity of cultures and provides opportunities to them,” the ambassador said. “We are fortunate to be part of this wonderful city whose residents have demonstrated such a strong solidarity and invaluable cooperation.”
Fenty said that city residents have now responded to two disasters, the earthquake in Haiti and now Chile, and encouraged everyone “to do even more.”
For information on how to donate, visit www.chile-usa.org, which provides details on a Bank of America account where contributions can be directed, as well as tax-exempt donations through the Pan American Development Foundation, along with a list of aid organizations working in Chile.
Outgoing Chilean Ambassador José Goñi, left, and D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty give a press conference outside the Chilean Embassy to provide an update on relief efforts in Chile, where an 8.8-magnitude earthquake in late February has killed more than 450 people.
Photo: Anna Gawel
Haitian Wife Hopes to Rebuild Quake-Ravaged City
Special to the Diplomatic Pouch contributed by Larry Luxner
Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated Haiti, Petit-Goâve was an impoverished town still struggling to recover from the four tropical storms and hurricanes that had wrecked its homes and ravaged its crops back in 2008.
But the Jan. 12 quake wrought utter destruction on the town and ripped apart its most famous landmark, the 300-year-old Our Lady of Assumption Catholic Church. And if that wasn’t enough, eight days later an aftershock registering 5.9 shook the earth — its epicenter located almost directly under Petit-Goâve.
Not a single Jew lives among the 170,000 inhabitants of Petit-Goâve, nor among the 20,000 or so refugees who have crowded into the town since the initial quake.
But Jews are definitely among those helping to bring Petit-Goâve back to life.
 On Feb. 16, Temple Rodef Shalom of Falls Church, Va., formed a partnership with a charity run by Lola Poisson, wife of Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador to the United States. And this Thursday, March 11, the Washington Hebrew Congregation will host the diplomatic couple for a fundraiser aimed at rebuilding the ravaged town located 42 miles west of Port-au-Prince.
“The last time I visited Petit-Goâve, after the hurricanes, it was so bad I didn’t know how people were living there,” Poisson told the Diplomatic Pouch. “I haven’t been back since the earthquake, but the town will have to be rebuilt completely. It will be in the millions of dollars.”
Last week, Poisson was able to visit Haiti with her longtime friend, Riva Levinson, a Rodef Shalom member and international consultant whose firm has done extensive work in Haiti over the years. (This reporter also came along and The Washington Diplomat will feature extensive coverage of Poisson’s trip in its upcoming April issue.)
“I am going to be working on reconstructing the church and the school we had been working with before, and start some kind of community center for women and children where they’ll have everything they need,” Poisson explained. “At this point, everybody needs housing. Shelter is the most important thing.”
International aid organizations estimate that in Petit-Goâve, about 1,000 people died in the quake and its aftershocks — a tiny fraction of the 230,000 or so Haitians killed by the disaster. About half the town’s buildings lay in ruins, including dozens of schools, radio stations and churches.
 Poisson has been involved with Petit-Goâve since January 2009 through her charity, Children & Families Global Development Fund Inc. She hopes to raise “substantial funds” for the town’s reconstruction during this week’s gala dinner, through the sale of tickets at $125 each.
The program, to be emceed by anchorwoman Maureen Bunyan of ABC TV News, includes a welcome by Bruce Lustig, senior rabbi at Washington Hebrew Congregation; remarks by Ambassador Joseph and Brad Horowitz, CEO of Trilogy International Partners; and a keynote speech by Archbishop Barney Auza, the papal nuncio of Haiti. There will also be a concert of traditional Haitian music, a live auction and an awards ceremony.
“I want Petit-Goâve to be a model city for Haiti,” Poisson told the Pouch. “At all levels I would like it to be well-organized and well-planned. Usually there is a big difference between haves and have-nots because we have no social welfare system in Haiti. We have to work with each and every individual.”
Michael Shochet, cantor at Rodef Shalom, said he wants to help Poisson, but that his synagogue can’t do it alone. “Our hope is to work with one of the larger organizations in the community, such as the Union for Reform Judaism or the Federation here in Washington, or the American Jewish World Services,” said the cantor. “One small congregation is not going to be able to raise a significant amount of money, but the Reform movement has raised a huge amount for Haiti relief and hasn’t allocated all the funds yet. That’s what we need.”
Rodef Shalom member Riva Levinson, managing director of KRL International, has worked in emerging markets throughout Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, including a 10-year stint in Angola during that country’s horrendous civil war. One of her most important clients is Trilogy, which owns Voila — a major provider of cell phone service in Haiti.
She said her objective for the quake-ravaged nation was to adopt a specific project in a specific town, to ensure that those involved would be in it for the long run.
“Through my work in Haiti, I knew Ray and Lola and wanted to connect them to the Jewish community. We picked Petit-Goâve at Lola’s suggestion, because she thought it was in tremendous need,” Levinson explained. “The town hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, but it’s the kind of place where a little bit of effort by the Jewish community can make a big difference. What you don’t want to do is be so ambitious in your objectives that you’re not able to see the fruits of your labor.”
Lola Poisson, wife of Haitian Ambassador Raymond Joseph, visits Petit-Goâve during a recent trip to Haiti.
Photos: Larry Luxner
Envoy: Venezuela Just Can’t Get Any Respect
Special to the Diplomatic Pouch contributed by Larry Luxner
 Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela’s ambassador to the United States, invited his reporter friends gathered around the long formal table to enjoy a hearty “desayuno venezolano” traditional dish of scrambled eggs, shredded beef, homemade arepas and hot steaming coffee on Feb. 25. Then he immediately launched into a verbal attack against the Obama White House, the Organization of American States (OAS), and anyone else seeking to malign his boss, President Hugo Chávez.
The breakfast briefing at the ambassador’s residence attracted around 20 Washington-based journalists. It was originally scheduled in response to a recent U.S. State Department report highly critical of Venezuela’s efforts to control drug smuggling.
But the day earlier on Feb. 24, the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a scathing, 300-page attack on the Chávez government, accusing it of restricting free expression, clamping down on the rights of citizens to protest, and silencing politicians who dare to oppose the president.
“Apparently, there is an attempt in Washington to try to present Venezuela as a country about to collapse, and this is not true,” said Alvarez, who was declared persona non grata by the Bush White House in 2008 but welcomed back to Washington last year by the incoming Obama administration.
“Since 2006, these intelligence reports have been mainly used as a way of attacking Venezuela for political reasons,” he argued. “For us, it’s clear that this is part of the same disinformation campaign against Venezuela that’s gone on for years and years.”
Alvarez was responding, among other perceived provocations, to Feb. 2 testimony by Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence, on the 2010 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
According to a Venezuelan Embassy press release, “unlike the 2009 report, the 2010 Threat Assessment focuses more specifically and politically on Venezuela and less on broader, measurable threats. This increased emphasis on Venezuela in the 2010 report — in which it is singled out as a major regional threat to the United States — is a worrying step that seems to contradict pledges made by the Obama administration in 2009 to work more cooperatively with the region to improve relations and address mutual challenges.”
Alvarez says he often gets the feeling there are two Barack Obamas — and that the president now sitting in the White House bears little resemblance to the president who shook hands with Chávez last April at the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain.
“On one hand, they say they want to talk to governments that have a different system than their own. But at the same time, they identify the Venezuelan system as a threat to the national security of the United States. So it’s a big contradiction to say you want dialogue with countries that think differently, but then you criminalize these countries,” the ambassador said. “It means that if you challenge the way the U.S. sees the Western Hemisphere, it immediately makes you an enemy. We are extremely concerned about this.”
Asked specifically to comment on the OAS report, Alvarez politely deflected questions to Roy Chaderton, Venezuela’s ambassador to the 34-nation entity, who was not present. And when a Spanish-speaking TV reporter repeatedly grilled him on why the Chávez government wouldn’t let members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights — an independent body of the OAS — visit Venezuela, Alvarez got defensive.
“A lot of bad things are happening in many other Latin American countries. We wish that Venezuela were the worst case, because then everything would be OK,” he said. “But the media here concentrates only on Venezuela.”
One of his biggest beefs seems to be Washington’s allegations that Chávez is doing nothing to fight the drug trade. Yet last year, Alvarez said, Venezuelan authorities seized 60 tons of drugs, up from 54 tons in 2008. And in the two preceding years — following a decision by Caracas to stop working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration — drug seizures jumped by 38 percent relative to the two years, 2002 to 2004, before cooperation between the DEA and Venezuela ended.
Last year, Venezuela also invested $260 million to buy and install 10 radars to track illegal drug flights, arrested close to 9,000 individuals for drug-related crimes, destroyed 26 clandestine laboratories, and “remained internationally engaged” through 50 anti-drug cooperation agreements with 38 countries.
“The State Department’s annual accusation that Venezuela is not cooperating in the fight against drugs is purely political,” Alvarez charged. “We may have political disagreements with the U.S., but a report on the fight against drugs should not be the means to air those. It is foolish to blame Venezuela for problems that reflect not the failure of one country’s efforts, but rather the failure of the supply side and military strategy against narcotics led in this hemisphere by the United States.”
The ambassador also denied persistent allegations that Hezbollah cells operate on the offshore island of Isla Margarita, and defended the close personal ties Chávez has cultivated with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“We have a large community of Syrians and Lebanese on Margarita, and those guys are very good merchants, but they don’t support terrorism. The Hezbollah charge is not true,” Alvarez said, adding that “the State Department uses Iran because it’s a very good strategy to say that any country that’s friends with Iran might be a threat to the United States. But Brazil has a great relationship with Iran too.”
Alvarez also dismissed a reporter’s question about rumors that Venezuela is helping Iran circumvent oil export sanctions — and he suggested that Venezuela’s Orinoco oil belt contains petroleum reserves far greater than those of Saudi Arabia.
“Iran has been a partner of Venezuela for years. We are both founding members of OPEC, we both have a lot of oil, and we get a lot of our technology in agricultural equipment, mining and oil and gas from Iran. It’s also a big player in that part of the world and has good relations with Pakistan, Qatar and all the former Soviet republics,” he said. “We have a good friendship with Ahmadinejad, as we did with [former President Mohammad] Khatami. And we will be ready to work with any other Iranian president who follows.”
With Bloodshed Over, Sri Lanka Now Pushes Touris
Special to the Diplomatic Pouch contributed by Larry Luxner
The guns have finally fallen silent in Sri Lanka, a nation wracked by civil war for the past quarter century. Now that it’s safe to visit, Sri Lanka’s leaders are tirelessly promoting the nation’s tourism appeal — from elephant orphanages to beautiful windswept beaches and sacred Buddhist shrines.
 They’re also highlighting the country’s delicious cuisine. With that in mind, the World Bank last month hosted its “Heritage Days” event featuring Sri Lankan delicacies in its main dining room, cooked up by executive pastry chef Gerard Mendis and guest chef P. Madwhawa Weerabaddhana.
For $21.95 per person, hungry diners helped themselves to a buffet lunch consisting of appetizers and entrées including mustard spicy tempered prawn, baked chicken in coriander, cherry tomato and spicy egg curry, and spinach cashew and green pea curry with ghee rice.
The Feb. 23-24 event, developed by Washington-based Restaurant Associates specifically for the World Bank Group, attracted some 350 people and a number of U.S. and Sri Lankan diplomats, including Jaliya Wickramasuriya, the country’s ambassador to the United States.
Such a lavish event would have been unthinkable even a year ago.
 At that time, militant separatists fighting under the banner of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were still locked in a violent, desperate struggle against the Sri Lankan army to hold onto a tiny coastal sliver of land in the country’s northeast, where they had once hoped to carve out a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamil-speaking Hindu minority.
The war claimed 100,000 lives over a 26-year span, with thousands of people — mostly Tamils — dying in the last few months before the LTTE’s violent defeat in May 2009. The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa proclaimed victory and has since resettled thousands of refugees from sprawling displaced-person camps, though critics charge it’s not doing enough to address the root problems that sparked the war in the first place.
In Colombo, according to Wickramasuriya, life has returned to normal — with an end to the roadblocks and random searches that since the early 1980s had been a part of the capital city’s landscape.
“I’m 50 years old, and I haven’t seen Sri Lanka this safe and positive in my whole life,” the ambassador told Pouch over a dessert of watalappam (coconut custard) and traditional Sri Lankan tea. “The people are free. Before, people were worried when their kids went to school whether they’d ever come back. But now, that fear is gone, and in Colombo you can’t even find a hotel room. That shows how much life has changed.”
Indeed, 30 percent more tourists came to Sri Lanka in January than in January 2009, though the numbers are still quite small compared to nearby countries like Thailand, India, Nepal and the Maldives.
 “In 1983, Thailand had 500,000 tourists and so did Sri Lanka. Now Thailand gets 2.6 million a year and we’re still at 500,000,” the ambassador said. “We’d love to get to 2.6 million by 2016. That’s our target.”
It just might happen. Cruise ships have begun returning to Sri Lanka, and last month, the New York Times travel section featured the West Virginia-size island as one of 32 “must-see” countries to visit in 2010.
Wickramasuriya said his nation will need 50,000 hotel rooms to accommodate the expected onslaught, up from only 15,000 at present. “Even now, we don’t have enough rooms. This is a huge problem,” he said, noting that although prices have jumped since the end of the civil war, five-star hotels are still a relative bargain, with rooms in Colombo going for an average of only $100 a night.
If these trends continue, he added, tourism could become Sri Lanka’s most important foreign-exchange earner, even eclipsing apparel ($3 billion) and tea exports ($1 billion).
Last October, Wickramasuriya’s mission — along with the U.S. Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office — led an investment mission to Sri Lanka that consisted of 40 major companies including Caterpillar, Marriott, Coca-Cola, Hilton and Ford.
Yet all is not well on the domestic front.
Sri Lanka’s former army chief, retired Gen. Sarath Fonseka, was jailed only two weeks after losing a Jan. 26 presidential election to Rajapaksa, the incumbent. Widely considered a hero after the government’s military defeat of the LTTE, Fonseka now plans to lead a new opposition coalition in a parliamentary vote set for April 8.
Government officials from Rajapaksa on down allege that Fonseka’s imprisonment was in no way politically motivated.
“His jailing had nothing to do with the election,” Wickramasuriya told the Pouch. “He was definitely one of the heroes of the war, but even if you’re a hero, you are not above the law.”
The ambassador claimed the ex-army chief — who will represent the Democratic National Alliance in the upcoming election — was guilty of taking kickbacks and other various offenses.
“For one thing, after you leave the army, you can’t keep deserters with you. He did. He also made some defense purchases from his daughter’s company, and there was a conflict of interest with his being chairman of the tender board.”
Many people still fear a resurgence of violence, given that Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil Diaspora — particularly in the United States, Canada, Europe and India — still dream of an independent Tamil Eelam homeland
The International Crisis Group, in its Feb. 23 report on Sri Lanka, urged the Rajapaksa government to “address the legitimate grievances at the root of the conflict: the political marginalization and physical insecurity of most Tamils in Sri Lanka.” The group is also calling for governments around the world to exert pressure on Colombo for political and constitutional reforms that will give Tamils and Muslims a “meaningful role in determining the future of the areas” where they have long been a majority.
“New Diaspora initiatives attempt to carry forward the struggle for an independent state in more transparent and democratic ways, but they must repudiate the LTTE’s violent methods,” said Robert Templer, director of International Crisis Group’s Asia program. “And they must also recognize that the LTTE’s separatist agenda is out of step with the wishes and needs of Tamils in Sri Lanka.”
The report adds that with the Sri Lankan government assuming Tamils abroad remain committed to violent means, “the Diaspora’s continued calls for a separate state feed the fears of the Rajapaksa administration and provide excuses for maintaining destructive anti-terrorism and emergency laws.”
Wickramasuriya said fewer than 80,000 Tamils are still living in refugee camps, and that while the world average for resettling refugees is 17 years, “in Sri Lanka we resettled 90 percent of our refugees within six months.”
Yet he conceded that, even with Sri Lanka at peace, he’s still worried about a resurgence of terrorism.
“We have to maintain law and order and the security of the country. Otherwise, this can come back,” he said. “It won’t be easy for the Tigers because their leadership is no more. But they can start up again if we don’t do the job right.”
Top photo, Sharon Eliatamby, a food services officer with the World Bank General Services Department, left, and Ambassador of Sri Lanka Jaliya Wickramasuriya attend a culinary event at the World Bank to showcase Sri Lankan cuisine. Now that Sri Lanka’s quarter-century civil war is over, the government hopes to ramp up tourism to the South Asian nation.
Photos: Larry Luxner
ADVERTISEMENT
THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT
P.O. Box 1345 Silver Spring, MD 20915-1345
Tel: 301.933.3552 Fax: 301.949.0065
www.washdiplomat.com
|
