TNA MP Suresh Premachandran has stated that the Tamil National Alliance would not be waiting "forever" to pursue the South African initiative of talks between the Tamil party and the Sri Lankan government, stating that pre-conditions for talks had already been laid out.
Speaking to the Tamil Guardian, Premachandran said,
"They (Sri Lanka) want to use (it) to show to the world that the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil people, we are discussing matters. That's what they want to do, but we told these things very clearly to the South African government, this is what the government is doing."
"This will be within a time frame matter. We don't want to give a free open space to continue forever. Maybe it will take place within a short period of time. That's what we told them already.
"We told them this must be outside of Sri Lanka and there must be international observers to these talks. And there must be a proper facilitation from them and these must be continuous talks. All these things were told by us to them. So if they agree to all these things only, then the talks will take place, otherwise there won’t be anything. We hope, I don’t know whether the Sri Lankan government will accept all these pre-conditions or demands, or however you call."
Premachandran went on to say,
"If that happens, of course there will be talks about talks. And on that time we will take up the militarisation, Sinhalisation, the political prisoners matters, various other day to day problems that must be take place (in the) first. Without resolving those things it will be very difficult to go ahead with other things, because the people will ask us “What is happeneing? You people are talking to the government but these things are still going on?”
