Unfortunately, the steps within Sri Lanka that need to be taken largely need to be taken by the government. As you just pointed out, and as I think as many are beginning to accept, the government doesn't seem interested in using the opening that the election of the provincial council gave.
What I think was the quite striking willingness of the Tamil National Alliance and the newly elected chief minister Vigneswaran to work within the quite limited, quite constrained powers that the 13th amendment offers, but nonetheless to try to make them work in the spirit of compromise.... That spirit of compromise has not, generally speaking, been reciprocated, despite occasional indications it might be by the government.
One interesting angle for the Canadian government to explore is what is the role of the development banks and of the UN in the north in assisting the Northern Provincial Council and in making clear publicly and privately its interest and desire to be able to work closely with the council.
If there were strong messages coming from the United Nations, including the UN Development Programme, whose regional head is actually visiting Sri Lanka as we speak, but also from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, both of which I believe Canada gives considerable amounts of money to every year and both of which do a considerable amount of development work in the north.... That work, ideally, would be done in close cooperation with the newly elected council. For that to happen, the central government has to agree. The heads of the World Bank and the heads of various UN agencies should be going regularly to the government in Colombo and saying, “We want to work with this council. We want to support devolution. This is what the UN has called for. It's what you say you want to do. Let us help you and help the council.”
That's something that Canada in its role as a contributing member of all of those agencies, all of those institutions, should be pressing for.