By EuAsiaNews,
Brussels : EU Commissioner for external relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, described Monday the situation in Sri Lanka as “very risky and dangerous.”
“Approximatively 170,000 people -it seems civilian people- are being trapped in the north part of Sri Lanka and neither the Sri Lanka government nor the LTTE have until now accepted our appeal for an immediate cease of fire or for finding possibilities for bringing food, basic goods, into this last resort where the fighting is going on,” she told a press conference Monday evening after a regular meeting of EU Foreign Ministers.
“I hope that rather soon a (EU) political troika of maybe the vice-ministers or political directors can go there and we will work in every different ways also with other allies in order to find a solution,” she said.
Meanwhile, an estimated 5000 diaspora Tamils held a demonstration in central Brussels Monday to protest against Sri Lanka’s military offensives in territories held by Tamil Tigers.
On developments in Pakistan, speaking to journalists earlier Monday, Ferrero-Waldner welcomed the reinstatement of the sacked Pakistani Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
” I think it is a good step forward and hopefully now both President Zardari and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and the political opposition can work together to confront the political enemies that are there and also the difficult situation in many parts of Pakistan ,” she said.
Ferrero-Waldner said that during a EU Troika meeting with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Prague last Friday the EU told him that “we wanted to see the government come to a compromise with the opposition.”
“We think it is very important that there is political stability in the country because we have an enemy and the enemy is extremism and fundamentalism. This has been our message,” she added.