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| Sri Lanka |
| Sri Lankan fighting continues as fears of full-scale war rise |
| 2006-04-30 |
| Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers and the military exchanged fire across front lines on Saturday, while diplomats tried to bring about new peace talks and avert renewed civil war. The army said they believed rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were responsible for shooting dead a policeman in Vavuniya, a town just to the south of the front line with rebel territory. The Tigers fired shots across a northern checkpoint with government territory in the early hours of the morning, drawing small arms fire from government forces, the army said. "We have retaliated and they have drawn back," said a military spokesman. "There were no casualties." The events around the front line capped a week of the worst violence since the government and Tigers signed a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire in 2002 after two decades of fighting that killed 64,000 people. A suicide bomb attack in the capital that killed 11 and wounded the army commander was followed by military air and artillery strikes on rebel positions in the north and east, leading many to fear the war over a homeland for minority Tamils would resume. At a meeting of Sri Lanka's main aid donors in Oslo on Friday, mediator Norway said that despite the violence both sides remained committed to peace talks meant to take place in Geneva earlier this month. The Tigers pulled out of the negotiations citing a dispute over transport of rebel commanders to their northern headquarters for pre-talks consultations, but the government was hopeful they might accept a new offer of a sea plane for the transport. "So far the reaction we have through Norway has been positive," Palitha Kohona, head of the government's peace secretariat, told Reuters. The Tigers said they were giving the offer some thought. "Our leadership is considering it but we have to discuss many practical things with the Norwegians," said Tiger media co-ordinator Daya Master. The new sticking point appears to be whether the plane would land in government or rebel-controlled territory. Even if transport arrangements can be made, analysts say the real issue is the Tigers' anger the government has not reined in a group of breakaway rebels, who truce monitors say have been operating from government territory and attacking the LTTE. The military has held off air strikes since Wednesday, the day after the suicide bombing in Colombo, and life in the north and east was returning to normal, but continuing violence was also overshadowing efforts to get back to the negotiating table. LTTE sniper fire in the northwest region of Mannar killed an unarmed soldier late on Friday as he was bathing in a lake, the army said. The pro-rebel Tamilnet Web site reported the army shot dead a former Tiger member in the eastern district of Batticaloa and said two cadres were killed in a claymore mine attack it blamed on the army in an LTTE-controlled part of the east. The cycle of suspected Tiger attacks on the military, ethnic riots and political killings, along with the air strikes and suicide bombing, has claimed some 120 lives in less than a month. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Surely full scale war would advantage the government, and severely disadvantage the Tigers? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-04-30 14:26 |