Sri Lanka rebels say talks will decide peace or war
[ Reuters ] [ 11:06 GMT, Feb. 16, 2006 ]
Talks between Sri Lanka and Tamil Tigers next week will determine if there is peace or war, the rebels said, branding President Mahinda Rajapakse's refusal to consider a separate Tamil homeland as "childish". He said the talks would centre on implementing the terms of the truce. "It's very unfortunate that we have to go back four years and again speak of implementation. Frustration, restlessness, anger, all are there. But we are people who believe in the use of political civilisation." Asked if the talks would decide if Sri Lanka was headed towards peace or war, he said: "Yes". The LTTE delegation will leave on Friday ahead of the two-day talks the following week -- the first high-level talks since direct negotiations broke down in 2003.
INTERVIEW: Sri Lanka rebels say talks will decide peace or war
By: Peter Apps
Source: Reutera - February 16, 2006
KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka - Talks between Sri Lanka and Tamil Tigers next week will determine if there is peace or war, the rebels said, branding President Mahinda Rajapakse's refusal to consider a separate Tamil homeland as "childish".
Suspected rebel attacks in December and January all but destroyed a Norway-brokered 2002 ceasefire, but violence fell after the two sides agreed to meet in Switzerland. The rebels said that did not mean the country was further from a return to a two-decade civil war.
"That is totally dependent on the outcome of this meeting," S.P. Thamilselvan, head of the political wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), told Reuters in an interview late on Wednesday.
He said the talks would centre on implementing the terms of the truce.
"It's very unfortunate that we have to go back four years and again speak of implementation. Frustration, restlessness, anger, all are there. But we are people who believe in the use of political civilisation."
Asked if the talks would decide if Sri Lanka was headed towards peace or war, he said: "Yes".
The LTTE delegation will leave on Friday ahead of the two-day talks the following week -- the first high-level talks since direct negotiations broke down in 2003.
Thamilselvan again denied any direct LTTE involvement in ambushes on troops in government held-areas that killed dozens of soldiers and sailors in January and December, saying angry Tamil civilian groups outside rebel control carried them out.
Few analysts or diplomats believe them, and some still expect a return to a war that killed more than 64,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands from their homes.
On Monday, Rajapakse told Reuters a separate homeland or a separate state for the island's Tamil minority was out of the question. The rebels were not happy.
SEPARATE STATE
"Mahinda Rajapakse's statement seems to us very childish and not with the ground reality," Thamilselvan said through an interpreter in the de facto rebel capital, Kilinochchi, from which they run roughly a seventh of Sri Lanka.
"We don't believe that that kind of childish statement will help resolve a conflict of this nature."
In Kilinochchi, a small town that has grown in four years of peace but which still bears scars from aerial bombing, many rebel supporters say a separate state is vital.
But Thamilselvan was less precise over whether an eventual homeland in the Tamil-dominated north must be a country in its own right.
"Any solution to the Tamil national problem should involve the concept of a Tamil homeland, nationhood and the right of self determination and provide the people with a dignified solution," he said.
"If all those elements are implemented, then we can address the question of whether it is a separate state or a devolved concept."
But a long-term solution to Sri Lanka's war will not be on the table at the talks, which will concentrate on making the truce work, and diplomats say the best likely outcome is simply the two sides agreeing to meet again.
The Tigers want the army out of civilian areas and Tamil homes occupied by the military returned. They say the key issue is the disarming of groups such as Karuna's -- a Tiger renegade -- who they blame for attacks on them and the abduction of seven pro-rebel aid workers.
On Monday, Rajapakse said the government was willing to disarm any armed group operating from government territory, but the rebels are not convinced.
"The present government is not at all interested in curbing the acts of the armed groups," Thamilselvan said. "It is only on one side the violence has receded.
Sri Lankan businesses to pray for truce talks success
[ AFP ] [ 12:27 GMT, Feb. 16, 2006 ]
Sri Lanka's influential trade lobby has asked businesses to light an oil lamp next week and pray for the success of truce talks between Tamil Tigers and the Colombo government. The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce in a statement asked shops and other business organisations to maintain a lamp vigil on Tuesday, a day before talks open in Geneva between Colombo and the Tigers. The Chamber said four other trade and commerce lobbies had joined them in calling for the peace vigil ahead of talks on saving a tenuous truce between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and government troops.
An Island on the Edge
[ Time ] [ 12:29 GMT, Feb. 16, 2006 ]
If last-ditch negotiations to save a faltering cease-fire fail next week, Sri Lanka's 23-year-old civil war could resume in full force. As she squats alone on the floor of her one-room hut, untwisting and retying a torn fishing net, it becomes clear that Rosa Nobert, 43, shares her days with the dead. The walls are hung with faded photographs: her husband, shot and burned in his fishing boat by the Sri Lankan navy; her two nephews, Tamil Tiger guerrillas killed in battle; and 17 relatives, including 13-year-old daughter May Linda, washed away by the tsunami. As Sri Lanka once more flirts with civil war, Rosa expects she will soon be adding one more picture to her gallery of ghosts: her 23-year-old son, Anthony.
Tamil rebels say they are committed to cease-fire, want Sri Lanka to fully implement it
[ AP ] [ 12:30 GMT, Feb. 16, 2006 ]
A top Tamil Tiger leader said Thursday the rebel group is committed to a four-year-old cease-fire, and will press for its full implementation at the upcoming Geneva talks. Seevaratnam Puleedevan, chief of the rebels' Peace Secretariat, implied that all-out war would not be ruled out if the Feb. 22-23 talks between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the government in the Swiss capital failed. "I do not want to predict anything," Puleedevan told The Associated Press. "But the future will depend on what steps the Sri Lankan government is going to take to see that the cease-fire agreement is implemented fully."
No compromise on separate homeland: LTTE
PK Balachandran
Colombo, February 15, 2006|20:26 IST
The LTTE said on Wednesday, that President Mahinda Rajapaksa's outright rejection of the concept of a Tamil Homeland in the North East of Sri Lanka would "seriously" affect the current efforts to resume talks.
It added that the rejection would leave the rebel group with "no alternative" other than to fight for self rule.
"The Tamil people are shocked over President Mahinda Rajapaksa's rejection of their basic political aspirations in an interview with Reuters on February 13, 2006," the LTTE said in a press release.
"The President had, in this interview, totally rejected the Tamil homeland concept and emphasised that a political solution to the racial conflict would be looked into only within the parameters of the unitary constitution."
"The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) strongly condemns these sentiments expressed by the President that tend to belittle the political rights of the Tamil people."
"President Mahinda Rajapaksa, hastily going to town without knowing correctly the deep contradictions and complexities of the Tamil-Sinhala racial conflict, would seriously impact the current efforts for talks."
"If the Mahinda regime adopts a political stand ruling out the Tamil homeland concept and insists on a resolution of the racial conflict within the unitary constitution, the LTTE would be left with no alternative other than to endeavour hard to respond effectively to the Tamil call for self rule," the release warned.
Deep seated grievances and long standing demand
"That the North East part of this island is the traditional homeland of the Tamil people is not a political concept that developed overnight," the LTTE went on to say.
"It has remained the habitat and homeland of the Tamil people for over several thousands of years. The Tamil homeland was well defined and demarcated even at the time of European invasion of this island."
"The Tamil people have always protested against Sinhala governments' systematic and planned Sinhala colonisation of the Tamil homeland with an ulterior sinister motive to grab territory.
Ground reality dictates that obviously it is the growth of Tamil peoples' military strength that has prevented the Sinhala regimes from furthering their agenda on this score."
"Homeland, nationhood and self-rule are the three basic and cardinal principles that have been guiding the LTTE in its struggle to find a peacefully negotiated political arrangement to the Tamil people, resolving the racial conflict."
"The Sinhala rulers are in a dream-psychosis that makes them wrongly perceive that their success in rejecting the Tamil homeland concept would invariably nullify the concepts of Tamil nationhood and self-rule."
"The unitary form of government, if translated into ground reality, means Sinhala Parliament, Sinhala Constitution, Sinhala Judiciary, Sinhala bureaucracy and Sinhala armed forces ruling this country."
"It is within this conceptually rigid supremacy centred unitary constitution that the Tamil people continue to face a cruel genocide."
"A resolution of the Tamil national problem through devolution of power within the parameters of the unitary constitution is a concept that has lost its credibility and adaptability almost fifty years ago."
"The Tamil people opted for a separate state only because their call for resolution of their national problem on the basis of federation was rejected."
"The Tamils' call for federalism has seen the passage of fifty years and their option for secession dates back to thirty years."
"The Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa now goes half a century backwards and is taking shelter into a rotten unitary constitutional concept."
"Going the extra mile, he even wishes to place this concept before the LTTE that has under its de-facto administration major parts of the Tamil homeland," the LTTE noted with dismay and anger.
Sri Lanka to hold nationwide local elections in March
[ Reuters ] [ 17:29 GMT, Feb. 16, 2006 ]
Sri Lanka said on Thursday it would hold local elections on March 30, including in Tamil Tiger rebel-held areas, but analysts said the vote could prove to be a double-edged sword. While some welcomed the fact that the poll would enable the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to take part in the electoral process through their proxies in parliament, others feared the rebels could scare off opponents to secure more power at a local level. "We have called nominations from everywhere. We have not yet decided how we are going to have elections in uncleared (rebel-held) areas," an Elections Secretariat official told Reuters, asking not to be named.
Singapore backs Thai for UN post
[ AFP ] [ 17:38 GMT, Feb. 16, 2006 ]
Singapore said Thursday it backed the candidacy of former Thai deputy prime minister Surakiart Sathirathai for the post of UN Secretary General despite a bid by South Korea’s foreign minister. South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon on Tuesday declared his candidacy to replace Kofi Annan as UN secretary general when Annan’s tenure expires at the end of the year. A Singapore foreign ministry statement said Ban’s declaration “will not affect Singapore’s support of Thai Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai’s candidacy.” It said Surakiart, a former foreign minister, remains the consensus candidate of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). Singapore’s reaffirmation of support for Surakiart came a day after Indonesia also announced its backing for the Thai candidate.
