In Sri Lanka, Minister for official language has advocated for providing Sinhala and Tamil language equal status along with making English as the third official language for the country. Talking to AIR in Colombo, Mano Ganeshan, who is minister for national coexistence, dialogue and official languages said, though Sinhala and Tamil have been accorded official language status in the present constitution, the wording suggests primacy of Sinhala over Tamil language which needs to be changed in the new constitution proposed to be brought up in coming months.<br/><br/>Mr. Ganeshan said nearly one-fourth of the country's population is Tamil speaking but most of them cannot interact and mingle with rest of the population because of the language barrier. The Minister said he is supportive of bilingual policy by combining Sinhala and Tamil with English. He said that several measures of making Sinhalese learn Tamil and vice-versa has not yielded results. <br/><br/>The Minister asserted that bridging of language identity will go a long way in solving the ethnic problem of the country, which has led to three decades long war. Mr. Ganeshan, who represent the Tamils of Indian origin in Sri Lanka, expressed scepticism at the progress made in last one year towards reconciliation.