| The leader of Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels has threatened to form a breakaway state if Colombo does not give him self-governing rights in the country’s north-east. Vellupillai Prabhakaran, however, denied that he was rearming his group and said he was still open to a negotiated settlement of the civil war that has killed 65,000. But if the government continues to oppress Tamils and deny them their rights, he said: "we have no alternative other than to secede and form an independent state. "We urge the Sinhala political leadership not to create the objective conditions that would drive our people to seek this ultimate option." The rebels started fighting for a separate Tamil homeland in 1983, claiming the mostly Hindu Tamils were discriminated against by Sri Lanka’s mostly Buddhist 14 million Sinhalese majority. The conflict stopped after a February 2002 ceasefire. The truce has held, but peace talks broke down in April, with the rebels demanding more autonomy than the government was willing to offer. |