Sri Lanka hopes EU ban will push rebels to talks

Colombo, May 30: Sri Lanka today welcomed a European Union ban against the island's Tamil Tiger rebels that diplomats said would freeze the their assets, saying it hoped it would convince the rebels to resume peace talks.

Diplomats in Brussels said the 25-nation bloc listed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a banned terrorist organisation overnight amid a sharp escalation in attacks and clashes with Sri Lanka's military.

The Tigers had no immediate comment, but they have previously said that proscription would deter them from returning to talks aimed at permanently halting a two-decade civil war and would 'exacerbate the conditions of war.'

''We are hopeful that this ban ... would persuade the Tamil Tigers to come in and talk to the government,'' senior presidential aide Ajith Nivard Cabraal told Reuters. ''It gives them a space to get back to the table.'' ''The Tigers are getting more and more isolated, which means the Tigers have to understand that the only reasonable, legitimate course of action that they have is to talk to the government and resolve this,'' he added.

The ban is a diplomatic slap in the face for the rebels, who have sought to project an image abroad as viable leaders of a de facto state they want recognised as a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the island's north and east.

The United States, Britain, Canada and India have already outlawed the Tigers.

Analysts say an EU freeze on assets would hurt the war chest of the Tigers, who have used past trips to Europe during peace talks to raise funds from expatriate Tamils.

''One of the main ingredients of any activity of a terrorist group would be the money that they have, and if that dries up, it is going to hamper that work,'' Nivard Cabraal said. ''Hopefully that would act as a deterrent.''

DONORS MEET

The island's main donors, Japan, Norway, the United States and the European Union, who together have pledged 4.5 billion dollars in aid to foster peace in Sri Lanka, met in Tokyo today to assess the island's deteriorating security situation. ''The situation in Sri Lanka is of our gravest concern,'' Japan's special peace envoy, Yasushi Akashi, told the meeting. ''We are now indeed in a very crucial and critical turning-point in Sri Lanka.'' More than 280 soldiers, police, civilians and rebels have been killed in a rash of attacks from suicide bombings to naval clashes since February in what the truce monitors and Tigers now call a ''low intensity war.'' Sporadic violence continued overnight, and the army said it was investigating reports that suspected rebels shot dead 14 majority-Sinhalese civilians in the restive east late yesterday.

The Tigers accuse the military of helping a breakaway band of former comrades to kill their fighters and murder ethnic Tamil civilians, and security analysts see a pattern of tit-for-tat attacks between the military and the rebels.

Many ordinary Sri Lankans already displaced by years of war fear a return to a full-scale conflict that killed more than 64,000 people before a 2002.

Sri Lanka can ill afford a return to war. Lynchpin textile to tea sector companies fear foreign buyers could look elsewhere for steady supplies if the conflict flares, while many firms are holding off investing in the 20 billion dollar economy until they see signs of stability.

REUTERS

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