Let me put a new article and let us throw MUD at each other..lolz
LTTE to stick with ceasefire despite Govt. rejection
By Amantha Perera and Arthur Warmanan
The Tigers yesterday said that they would abide by the unilateral ceasefire declared by them to coincide with the SAARC Summit despite the government s rejection and added that it was a goodwill gesture towards the international community, particularly towards SAARC nations.
'This is a gesture aimed at the international community and the SAARC nations in particular,' Tiger military spokesperson Rasiah Ilanthirayan told The Morning Leader, soon after the organisation announced a unilateral ceasefire between July 26 and August 4, to coincide with the summit.
Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse said that the Tiger announcement was an indication of the organisation s military weakness and the government was not going to fall for its ploys.
'Government won t enter a ceasefire when the LTTE is militarily weak,' the SMS news service JNW quoted the Defence Secretary yesterday morning.
Leader of the House and the head of the government delegation to the last round of peace talks with the Tigers, Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva told parliament last afternoon that the government was not ready provide a weakened LTTE 'oxygen' by entering into a ceasefire.
The Tiger announcement however said that they would resist military action by government forces into areas under their command despite the temporary truce.
'If the occupying Sinhala forces, disrespecting the goodwill gesture of our people and our nation, carry out any offensives, our movement will be forced to take defensive actions,' it said.
Ilanthirayan told The Morning Leader that developments in the near future would indicate whether the Tigers were militarily weak or were engaged in tactical military manoeuvres in the northern battlefront.
Government Peace Secretariat Head Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha said that there was no indication that the declared truce would be the forerunner for a permanent ceasefire.
'Going by the previous experience, we do not know where this unilateral ceasefire would lead to. And we do not know the actual purpose behind the unilateral declaration,' he told The Morning Leader. 'According to what I know, the text is quite aggressive about the security forces. It also, as far as I see it, does not state that this should be a prelude to the future peace process.'
The Tigers had first informed the Norwegian Mission in Colombo of the ceasefire on July 21 night.
'We were informed by the LTTE Peace Secretariat of the truce by phone and we in turn informed the Government Peace Secretariat,' Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy Hildeh Haraldstat told The Morning Leader. She said that the Norwegian Mission had been in contact with the Government Peace Secretariat throughout yesterday.
However Prof. Wijesinha said that there was no official communication from the Tigers to the government and that the Government Peace Secretariat was informed of the Tiger announcement and not of an official communication between the two parties with Norwegian facilitation.
'What the LTTE should realise is that the interlocutor is Sri Lanka. It is good that the LTTE has stated it would not create any problem during SAARC. But, I wish that they (LTTE) had officially informed the Government of Sri Lanka or asked Norway to pass the message on to us officially, if they needed a response from the government,' he said.
There was no official government communication to the Norwegians even late last afternoon over the Tiger truce despite several ministers and officials reacting to the media.
The last occasion the Tigers declared a unilateral ceasefire was seven years ago, in December 2001 that eventually led to the February 2002 ceasefire.
Edited By - Berty - 23 Jul 2008 04:38:01 GMT |
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