Saturday 19th September, 2026

The US has refused to grant Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a visa to attend the UN General Assembly in New York next week, according to a BBC report. Washington claims that it has denied visas to Palestinian representatives, including Abbas, for their failure to live up to peace process commitments. Sanctions were initially imposed in August last year, when 80 Palestinian officials were denied visas for the annual UN meeting in New York, BBC report says.

The US has accused the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organisation of “glorifying terrorism” and attempting to “internationalise” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is laughable that such concerns about peace have been raised by the US, which has made six major military interventions commonly known as wars since 1945, namely, Korean War (1950–53), Vietnam War (major US combat involvement, 1964–73), Gulf War (1990–91), Afghanistan War (2001–21), Iraq Invasion (2003–11), War against ISIS in Iraq and Syria (from 2014), Libya engagement and the ongoing Iran war.

Interestingly, the Trump administration has granted Iranian leaders visas to attend the UN summit. A State Department Spokesman is reported to have said that a core delegation from Iran will be allowed to attend the summit in line with the United States’ obligations as the UN host country. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi are expected to be granted US visas.

Aren’t the US obligations as the UN host country applicable to Palestine? The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has called the visa sanctions “an unjustified measure that runs counter to efforts to rebuild trust, develop Palestinian-US relations, and create the necessary political climate for implementing the two-state solution and achieving peace and stability”. It has vehemently rejected the long-held accusations by the Trump government and Israel, noting that Palestine has a right to seek accountability against an occupying force under international law.

One may recall that the UN had to contend with a similar issue in 1988; over a statement concerning Yasser Arafat’s visa, the UN Legal Counsel stated that the 1947 UN-US Headquarters Agreement gives persons, covered by Section 11, an “unrestricted right” to enter the US for the purpose of UN proceedings. The US maintained that its law preserved its authority to exclude persons on national security grounds. The UN Legal Counsel responded that there was a difference of opinion between the UN and the US concerning the legal character and validity of that US security reservation.

The Headquarters Agreement has created a special treaty-based obligation concerning the entry and transit of accredited representatives of UN member states attending official UN business. It establishes the protection against impediments to transit, and its Section 13(a) specifically says immigration laws must not interfere with that protection and requires US visas, where necessary, to be issued promptly and free of charge. Section 12 of the Agreement specifically states that the US authorities must provide necessary protection to such persons while they are travelling to or from the UN Headquarters district, and this provision applies regardless of the relationship between the person’s government and the US. The Agreement however does not give UN representatives unrestricted freedom to visit other parts of the US unless such travel is for official UN meetings or official UN business.

There have been only half-hearted attempts to address the issue of access restrictions imposed by the US on some accredited representatives of UN member states, seeking to attend UN proceedings. It is time the UN stopped dilly-dallying and grasped the nettle. It should ensure that UN representatives attending the UN General Assembly and other official events of the world body are not left at the mercy of Washington. But who will bell the cat?

The Colombo District Development Committee (CDDC), at a recent meeting chaired by Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, has stressed the need for a comprehensive public parking plan and proposed multi-storey parking structures to ease severe congestion, exacerbated by the proliferation of commercial establishments in areas, such as Nugegoda. The committee has also discussed the issue of congestion near schools in Colombo city. Parking facilities are vital to any traffic management plan, but they alone do not help tackle congestion, which mainly results from the way existing road space is used and the interaction among through traffic, local traffic, pedestrians, parking and public transport, as experts have pointed out.

Traffic congestion in urban centres continues to worsen as successive governments have failed to implement a holistic approach to tackling the problem. There have been only piecemeal solutions.

Traffic congestion is multifactorial, and several key causative factors that have been identified and solutions proposed by experts over the years. The World Bank has pointed out that the growth of private vehicle ownership is a principal cause of congestion in Colombo. Deficiencies in public transport are driving the public towards private transport. Buses and trains are unreliable, uncomfortable or poorly coordinated.

Major roads carry both through traffic as well as traffic whose destination is somewhere along them, creating unnecessary interaction between different types of vehicular movement. A World Bank assessment identifies the lack of orbital links and secondary roads as a weakness in Colombo’s road infrastructure. This holds true for other urban centres as well.

Too many intersections are another problem. At every junction, vehicles entering from side roads, particularly those turning right across the main traffic stream, interrupt through traffic. Closely spaced intersections can therefore turn an otherwise adequate road into a sequence of bottlenecks. This problem has been tackled in the Kalutara town to a considerable extent; an uninterrupted central route runs through the town, with parallel roads providing local access. Local turning and stopping movements are prevented from repeatedly disrupting through traffic. There is a need to redesign junctions, coordinate signals, improve lane discipline and use modern traffic-management systems.

On-street parking and vehicles stopping on the carriageway also contribute to congestion. This is a particularly avoidable cause of congestion, as the CDDC has rightly observed at the aforementioned meeting. The World Bank has specifically identified “inadequate parking facilities” as a contributor to street congestion, noting that traffic lanes are blocked by double parking. Roadside commercial activity and encroachment have also been identified as one of the main causes of congestion. Shops, vendors, loading and unloading, parking, etc., effectively reduce the usable width of a road in a busy urban area.

Weak enforcement has resulted in illegal parking, stopping, turning and other violations that reduce the capacity of any road. Experts have called for consistent enforcement of traffic regulations, supported, where appropriate, by cameras. Lack of discipline among all road users, especially heavy vehicle and trishaw drivers and motorcyclists, is responsible for ever-worsening road chaos. This aspect of the problem too needs to be addressed.

Haphazard, large developments generate enormous additional traffic if they are concentrated around already congested roads or junctions. Nugegoda is a case in point. High-rise apartment complexes are mushrooming in Colombo even on narrow lanes. How such building plans pass muster with municipal and urban development authorities defies comprehension.

There have been several major transport studies and master plans to tackle congestion and related transport issues. If the incumbent government is keen to make roads less chaotic and prevent avoidable waste of fuel and manhours, it can commission a follow-up study to review and update the findings of the previous ones and formulate a comprehensive strategy to ease congestion.

It is believed that congestion costs Sri Lanka tens of billions of rupees a year and wastes millions of productive man-hours, with estimates ranging from about Rs. 32 billion in Greater Colombo in 2009 to more than Rs. 200 billion annually in a more recent estimate.

Expressways have benefited the country, and the current government has unveiled an ambitious plan to build some more. New expressways may be built, but the government ought not to lose sight of the need to develop the other roads characterised by congestion and delays.

Thursday 17th September, 2026

The police have been grappling with a chronic manpower shortage, but they have not allowed it to stand in the way of investigating Opposition politicians. They are going to probe an NGO activist’s complaint that the LTTE, a banned organisation, was ‘promoted’ at a recent SLPP rally in Anuradhapura, according to media reports. Presumably, the complaint is about Jaffna District MP Ramanathan Archchuna’s admission during his speech at the SLPP rally on 12 Sept., that he was a Tiger (LTTE member).

If the police launch an investigation into MP Archchuna’s statement at issue, they should also probe some serious allegations he made against the incumbent government, especially his claim that pro-LTTE groups residing overseas backed the JVP-led NPP’s election campaigns.

The JVP-NPP government is all out to paint a black picture of the SLPP as a party of rogues and pseudo-patriots in a bid to prevent nationalistic forces from rallying behind the Rajapaksas again. So, all signs are that the police will go the whole nine yards and probe MP Archchuna’s declaration that he is a ‘Tiger’, though this is not the first time he has said so. It is doubtful whether the JVP/NPP leaders will be able to portray themselves as patriots by causing legal action to be taken against Archchuna and the SLPP over his Anuradhapura speech.

All self-proclaimed patriots in Sri Lankan politics have demonstrated that they do not scruple to subjugate their ‘patriotism’ to political expediency. Real patriots do not abuse power, resort to violence or terrorism, suppress democracy, destroy state assets, steal public funds or indulge in bribery and corruption, do they?

A probe is currently underway into an allegation that the SLPP engineered the 2019 regime change with the help of the National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ), which carried out the Easter Sunday carnage. On Tuesday (15) Additional Solicitor General Dileepa Peiris informed the Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court that investigations had uncovered that a person named Alawdeen, the father-in-law of one of the Easter Sunday suicide bombers, had provided speedboats to Zahran and his associates to travel to India before the Easter Sunday terror attacks. Alawdeen’s daughter, who was married to the bomber, had been released from detention during the presidency of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and Alawdeen had supported Rajapaksa’s election campaign, Peiris claimed. His allegation reminds us of Yusuf Mohamed Ibrahim, the father of two Easter Sunday suicide bombers, Inshaf and Ilham. Ibrahim has been a key suspect in the Easter Sunday bombing investigation, and his company was under investigation for its alleged role in supplying materials used in the Easter Sunday attacks. Investigators have revealed that one of the two Ibrahim brothers who carried out the terror attacks spent about Rs. 45 million on NTJ terror operations. Ibrahim was a JVP National List nominee in 2015.

The Rajapaksa family has been accused of securing the help of both northern terrorists and eastern terrorists to capture power. One may recall that it enlisted the support of former southern terrorists as well. The UNP accused Mahinda Rajapaksa of having won the presidency in 2005 by bribing the LTTE to call for a boycott of the 2005 presidential election, thereby preventing many Tamil voters, who were thought to be supportive of UNP candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe, from voting. Mahinda contested from the SLFP, which was backed by a collective of left parties, with the JVP leading his presidential election campaign from the front and making his victory possible. President Rajapaksa subsequently provided political leadership for defeating the LTTE.

The UNP cut secret deals with the LTTE. President Ranasinghe Premadasa donated arms, ammunition, building materials and money to the LTTE while it was fighting the Indian Peace Keeping Force. The TNA, created by the LTTE, announced the 2005 presidential election boycott in the LTTE-held areas, and acted as the LTTE’s mouthpiece in Parliament. In the 2010 presidential election, the TNA backed former Army Commander Gen. Sarath Fonseka, who contested from the New Democratic Front, supported by the JVP, the UNP, the SLMC, etc. The same UNP-led opposition alliance, backed by the TNA and the JVP, among others, supported Maithripala Sirisena’s successful presidential bid in 2015. The JVP is now facing allegations that it is shielding an Easter Sunday terror suspect (Ibrahim) and has secured the support of pro-LTTE groups to win elections.

Politicians are not alone in having double standards on terrorism. Some prominent religious leaders who publicly express their abhorrence of terrorism had no qualms about meeting LTTE leaders, including Prabhakaran, and posing for photographs with them.

Nothing gives greater succour to terrorism than the hypocrisy of political and religious leaders.