by our Defence Corespondent
The government has taken a decision to continue the censorship on military news until after the provincial council elections scheduled for Aug. 28, highly placed government sources said.

The decision was taken after senior Cabinet ministers held discussions on the matter last week, sources said.

Many journalists had expected that President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga would feel compelled to lift the censorship before the SAARC summit which will be from July 29-31. Having censorship in a country where the leaders of six other countries are meeting would have very bad effects on Sri Lanka's image, since censorship in any country generally indicates a state of repression.However, several ministers have correctly noted that the SAARC summit itself will get little attention this year, due to the focus being on the India-Pakistan nuclear crisis. Sri Lanka, the host country, will get even less publicity than the summit.

In fact some ministers argued that whatever publicity the country got being seen as a place where two nuclear powers are ironing out their differences. The censorship, and in fact, the Eelam War itself, would be forgotten.

In fact, the hundreds of journalists who will descend on Colombo from around the world next week will be focusing almost totally on Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif. This will be their first meeting since the two countries staged tit-for-tat nuclear tests in May. In fact it is their first meeting since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was elected, and Vajpayee became prime minister.

Foreign Ministry officials have already evaluated the possible negative impact of the censorship, and found it to be negligible, sources said.

With the whole world expecting nothing but good news from two leading statesmen as Sharif and Vajpayee, they are expected to leave their popularistic public sabre rattling policies behind and have very friendly talks in Colombo.

Expectations are high that they may even reach some agreement with regard to the future of nuclear weapons in South Asia, since they will be discussing the issue in private, where they will both be relaxed, and out of the public eye. The issue is not likely to be discussed on the agenda of the SAARC summit itself, although it may be mentioned.

In other words, Pakistan and India are the show, Sri Lanka is expected to reap the benefits of being the amiable host, and domestic issues can be conveniently swept under the carpet.

Although the president had not intended to have elections with a censorship going on, the marked lack of opposition to the censorship has made the government think twice.

The United National Party, which should have been marching in the streets against the censorship, has made barely a murmur about it, and is not expected to make it an issue in the campaign. It is expected instead to focus on the high cost of living and the general dragging of the war, as well as the usual Òbreaking of promises by the PA' argument.

The Cabinet ministers had noted in their discussion that there is a significant apathy on the part of the public towards the censorship, and continuing it is unlikely to sway many undecided voters.

Perhaps most telling of all is the silence of journalists and media groups here and abroad, on the issue of the eight week old censorship.

Although watchdog groups such as the Free Media Movement, the Foreign Correspondents Association, and Reporters Sans Frontiers made some protests when the censorship was imposed in May, the protests soon died down, and hardly anyone is speaking about it now.

One reason for journalists' apathy is the LTTE has not been able to inflict any major defeat on the armed forces in the last month and a half. Not since hundreds of soldiers died at Mankulam in early June has there been a major defeat.

There is little bad news or good news to write, so journalists are staying mum.

For the government's part, the censorship has been fairly slack, and reports of a few soldiers killed here and there have been passed with only significant deletions. The deaths of 13 policemen in the Ampara district two weeks ago was not deemed important enough to delete.

Only a few weekly defence columns which write in depth about scandals, corruption and infighting within the forces, including this column, have been affected.

Some journalists have stuck to their guns, or should we say their pens, only to have entire articles butchered and made incomprehensible. Other columnists have toned down their articles, knowing that readers don't like seeing only bits and pieces of articles.

However, there is a strong likelihood that this situation may change next week.

The LTTE has almost always taken advantage of any international event in Colombo, to stage attacks and gain publicity for themselves. This is quite likely to happen next week.

However, past experience tell us that such attacks are not likely to be in Colombo itself during the summit, but could be launched against camps in the northeast. Attacks in towns and cities outside the northeast, leaving Colombo alone, are also possible.

The LTTE doesn't need to attack Colombo to make a point. The wail of hundreds of ambulance sirens through the city's streets, while hundreds of foreign reporters and cameramen are here, would speak for itself.

Bentota, where the summit delegates and leaders will be spending a day, is another likely target, although the host hotel itself, the new 5-star Taj Exotica, is unlikely to be targeted.

However, another possibility is that Colombo may be attacked either before or after the summit, when the delegates aren't here, but foreign journalists are.

It would be most interesting to see what the government's censors, the so-called Competent Authority, would do if a major attack took place during or within a few days of the summit.

Although local journalists would dutifully trot their articles over to Major General Jaliya Nammuni at the Defence Ministry, most of the foreign journalists would not, since they would be here only for a few days and wouldn't care less what our government thought of them.

Knowing that at least a few of their competitors would report an attack without asking the censor, all the others would follow suit.

The Competent Authority would then have a choice of arresting, jailing or deporting all of them, which he would never do, or keeping his mouth tightly shut until they left.

Next week will tell
As for the elections, if the government gets away with having SAARC with censorship, it is likely to keep it until at least a few days before the polls.

However the president is known to be averse to going down in history as a leader who held elections with censorship, and she is likely to suspend the censorship for at least the day of the election, sources said.