Sri Lanka's Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa outlined his thoughts on a number of issues in a recent interview. See here for full interview. Extracts reproduced below:

Q: Don’t you think all these leaders, including your brother always felt that the LTTE was a result of a political problem, caused by an issue the Tamil people faced in the North? Do you not think that this problem should be addressed?

GR: It is not a political problem, in many countries including so-called advanced societies which have minorities there are issues relating to the minorities. One has to then understand these issues and address them, whether in the US, the UK or any other country, these  issues exist when there are minorities.

Q: But still don’t you believe in devolution or decentralisation of power?

GR: No I don’t believe in devolution because of the above points I mentioned. If devolution is for administrative purposes that is of course legitimate. But if one thinks that devolution would provide an answer to the national problem that is something that I don’t agree with.

Q: Moving on to another direction, despite this country being one of the few countries that has not seen terror since the end of its war in 2009, there has been a sudden rise in communal tensions?

GR: This again I see as a reaction to some of the claims and things done by the minorities. We shouldn’t let these things come out. Remember the majority community is 78% but if some 8% or 10% of the community tries to bring various issues all the time it creates a suspicion among the majority community. It creates insecurity within the majority community and obviously there will be sections reacting to that. This is what happened. And this is why I say that we should not alienate issues to be regarded as Tamil or Muslim issues.

Q: But do you deplore this form or any other form of extremism?

GR: Of course I do. That’s the main teaching of the Buddha “the Middle Path”. Any form of extremism is bad and that is the teaching of the Buddha and I deplore any form of extremist adherences.

Q: You earlier said that the strained relationship with India caused the LTTE. Accordingly if one is to take that the 13th amendment was India’s creation don’t you think that it would cause a problem now with India by backtracking it?

GR: This is why I said we should not listen to India. This is our problem. Diplomatic relationships are different from this and we should not mix the two up. We should have good diplomatic relationships with India, Pakistan, China and everybody.

But India and Sri Lanka are two countries. This problem is inherently a Sri Lankan problem and should be solved by Sri Lankans.

If the relationship of these two countries is strained on this one issue then it is wrong, even on India’s part. I have spoken to the new High Commissioner, and the Indian Officials and they have never said that relationships would be strained because of this issue.

This is our country and it is our future that we are talking about here. We can’t sacrifice this country’s future due to pressure from any other country, be it India, US or Europe. We will live for a very short period but for generations and generations to come Sri Lanka must remain a sovereign independent  and a peaceful state.

We made a mistake earlier by giving into external pressure with regard to the method of governance in this country.