Don’t use SL as football- Minister

7 April 2011 02:53 pm Views - 8304

Power and Energy Minister Champika Ranawaka today in Parliament urged the Indian political leadership not to use Sri Lanka as a ‘football’ to create political chaos in the country as they did during the 1984/89 period.

Making his remarks during the emergency debate, Mr. Ranawaka who is the General Secretary of the JHU -a constituent party of the ruling coalition, said that the Indian political leaders, especially those in Tamil Nadu acted in this regard ahead of the elections in their country.

“We ask the leaders of the Congress Party, the BJP and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam not to use Sri Lanka as a football for their interests,” he said.

Besides, Mr. Ranawaka lashed out at the US-led Western forces saying that the hidden agenda behind the military intervention by them in Libya was to grab large deposits of Shale, a fine-grained sedimentary rock identified by scientists as the next best energy source, in that country.

The Minister Ranawaka said that Shale was a mineral resource spread throughout Libya, and the Western forces led by the US had eyed this new energy source. He said that this resource was also available in Sri Lanka and India.

“As pointed out in the recent issue of Time Magazine, Shale can be used in gas production too. The West wants to oust the regimes in the countries which are not amenable to their parochial goals. That is what is now happening in Ivory Coast and Libya,” he charged. (KB & YP)