There’s no poison in our tea, Sri Lanka tells buyers

Press, 11 January 1986, Page 9

There’s no poison in our tea, Sri Lanka tells buyers

NZPA-AFP Colombo The Sri Lanka Government has called in envoys from tea-buying countries to reassure over the Tamil separatist claims that Sri Lankan tea shipments wre being poisoned, informed sources said.

The Minister for Plantation Industries, Mr Montague Jayewickrema, has invited the heads of diplomatic missions from numerous countries to hear him give a briefing on steps taken to ensure that poisonings had not and would not

be carried out, the sources said. The Tamil Eelam Army, one of many Tamil militant groups seeking a separate state in Sri Lanka’s north and east, has said that it laced tea shipments with cyanide. Some tea buyers have halted imports and the United States is inspecting its shipments. Some buyers, such as Egypt, Iraq and Pakistan, were active in tea auctions in Colombo this week but Britain, Canada, Australia and European countries stayed away, tea trade sources have said.

The sources said yesterday that delays to Sri Lankan shipments would affect teas from other producer countries because tea from Sri Lanka was often used to blend with those of other countries. The English-language daily, “The Island,” said in an editorial that Sri Lankan teas were blended with those from countries such as Kenya, Indonesia and India and that “terrorists” were “sabotaging the world tea industry on which millions of starving workers are dependent for their basic requirements.”