(Admiral Leighton W Smith USN, C in C US Navy Europe and NATO and Allied Forces Southern Europe (1994-6) – who with his staff had prepared a military briefing on Bosnia for Holbrooke, the chief US envoy to Yugoslavia(1995+)

I always think of this excerpt whenever I read Dayan Jayathileke (DJ). Coincidentally Holbrooke US Ambassador to Germany, Assistant Secretary of State and head of the US negotiating team at the Dayton Peace talks wanted to ‘bomb for peace’.

Since Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka has found it necessary to preface his ‘Devolution and Sri Lanka’s Global Vulnerability: A Response to Prof. GH Peiris’ (The Island, 6 June) with a statement of the “fundamentals” of his stand in relation to province-based devolution, it would not be inappropriate for me to spell out the essence of my perceptions on this issue.

* Some NGOs feeding terrorism and conflict

* LTTE fronts posed as legitimate organisations

Sri Lanka emphasised that regulation, transparency and accountability of funding to NGOs and NPOs is a pre-requisite in the interest of national security and counter-terrorism as recognised by states, and that obligation placed on states to adhere to the regulatory framework in compliance with 40 Recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force, makes it mandatory to monitor fund transfers of all financial institutions inclusive of NPOs and INGOs (associations) and other financial institutions, in countering financing of terrorism, money laundering or other related trans-national crimes.

“Final days of war” and accountability is the hot topic in the diplomatic and international arena. Let us ask the Germans and the Japanese what they thought of when the Allied Troops flattened Dresden the night prior to Valentine’s Day in 1945 in a 2 night blanket bombing using 3,300 tons of high explosive and 1,500 tons of incendiary bombs that had no strategic goals except to murder 35,000 (some argue it is far more) German civilians and create cultural hurt and the Royal Air Force bomber SIR “Harris” claims he would repeat the bombing again 30 years later!