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Senior Sri Lanka rebel says truce void, war back on
COLOMBO - Sri Lankas four-year ceasefire is now void and the islands two-decade civil war is back on, a top Tamil Tiger rebel told Reuters on Monday as the guerrillas and the military entered a sixth straight day of fighting.S. Elilan, head of the Tigers political wing in the restive eastern district of Trincomalee, said army troops had resumed a bid to advance towards land they control in the east and had fired artillery and mortars at their territory in the north. The ceasefire agreement has become null and void at the moment, Elilan said by telephone from Trincomalee, adding government troops were continuing an advance towards their forward defence line in the east in a water supply dispute. The war is on and we are ready, added Elilan. The war has begun. It is the government which has started the war ... Militarily, we have decided to fight back if the Sri Lankan army enters our area. Elilan is not the Tigers main spokesman, but he is one of their top officials and their political head in Trincomalee. He has repeatedly warned of a return to war. The rebels, angry at President Mahinda Rajapakses outright rejection of their demand for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east, have pulled out of peace talks indefinitely and have been cranking up the rhetoric for months. The Tigers say Sri Lankas air force killed 15 rebels in five days of aerial bombing in the east and injured several others. The military said the death toll was much higher. The army says it has sustained no new casualties, despite becoming bogged down in a minefield on Sunday as they tried to reach a sluice they accuse the Tigers of blocking to choke water supplies to Sinhalese farmers in government territory. The government says troops are still trying to clear the mines in their first open advance on rebel-held areas since the 2002 ceasefire, and face intermittent firesights. They say they have purely humanitarian goals but that the Tigers have simply gone too far. Under international law, denial of water is a crime and people have gone to the gallows for less, said head of the government peace secretariat Palitha Kohona. The government says categorically that it is totally committed to the ceasefire. But the most important thing is to provide water for 50,000 people. The head of the islands Nordic truce monitoring mission said on Saturday the truce was dead in all but name after fresh violence killed more than 800 people so far this year. But he said he expected low intensity fighting rather than a full-blown return to a conflict that has killed more than 65,000 people. Janes Defence Weekly analyst Iqbal Athas fears the clashes could soon spread elsewhere across the island. Many diplomats fear Black Tiger suicide bombers, blamed for a failed assassination attack on the army commander, could bring the war to Colombo, further hammering investor confidence in the $23-billion economy. I think right now theyre at war, Athas said. If you look at the (army) operation that has started now, it is becoming clear that the confrontation has begun. Posted by: Steve 2006-07-31 |
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