COLOMBO - Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels on Thursday announced that they will resume their struggle for ”statehood” after declaring that a Norwegian-arranged truce was worthless. The Tiger rebels said the truce, which came into effect five years ago on Friday, was now non-existent and warned that Colombo’s military campaign will only add to the bloodshed.
“It has also compelled the Tamil people to resume their freedom struggle to realize their right to self-determination and to achieve statehood,” the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said in a statement.
The Tigers said the ceasefire brokered by peace facilitator Norway in 2002 had initially promised to bring peace to a country where more than 60,000 people had been killed in three decades of bloodshed. “Even though today it exists only on paper, it (the truce agreement) remains a unique document in the search for an end to the national conflict in the island of Sri Lanka,” the statement added.
| Stack it next to all the roadmaps for peace. |
The guerrillas blamed the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse, who came to power in November 2005, of trying to force a military solution to the conflict.
| Which seems to be working pretty well for them. |
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