Since the Government has established a separate institution to import arms for the Security Forces, there is no arms smuggling going on in Sri Lanka any longer, Construction and Engineering Services Minister Rajitha Senaratne said.

"The arms dealers had lost a huge amount of commission which is over 35 per cent due to this situation. Now they have got together with some media organisations to denigrate the Government," Senaratne added.

He was addressing the weekly press briefing of United National Party's (UNP) Democratic Group held at Seth Sevana, Colombo 5 yesterday.

Minister Senaratne said the highest commissions can be earned only from smuggling arms and drugs. It is over 35 per cent.

Earlier arms dealers supplied arms for the Security Forces and the same persons supplied the same weapons to the LTTE using other routes.

"It was a lucrative business for them. After the Government established the corporation to import arms for the Security Forces, they lost their business and also lost access to the details of arms purchases by the Security Forces which they passed on to the LTTE. Now they have got together to sling mud at the Government."

Minister Senaratne pointed out that Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Army Commander Sarath Fonseka escaped narrowly from LTTE suicide attacks.

"But they still fight for the country and the Armed Forces sacrifice lives to save the country.

"The media should take this into consideration. There are no defence columns in countries like United States because there is a 'Patriots Act', which prevents journalists from writing about war, arms deals and similar topics".

"Human Rights Watch should start its work from the United States where 23 of Bin Laden's relatives were deported from the US putting them on a separate plane after the 9/11 attack. We in Sri Lanka have not done something like that and if we do they will call it a violation of human rights. No one talked about killing 600,000 people in Iraq. In the United Kingdom they retain suspects for 45 days.

But no one tried to kill their Prime Minister and he has no death threats."

Discussions have been held with five media organisations and arrangements have already been made to meet them and all the other media organisations continuously.

Now it has been detected that Sanath Balasuriya received the threatening phone call from England and the telephone has a roaming number.

Another journalist who is the last person in the `list of 27 journalists' stated that there is a third party behind the threats received by him and it was not the Government. A person has written down his name in the list and it was not printed in the original list. Now the journalists who are in this `list' deny the list itself, the minister pointed out.

Minister Senaratne stressed that arrangements have been made to maintain contacts with journalists and solve all problems they face.

Courtesy : Daily News