Finnish monitors to leave S Lanka as mortars fly

COLOMBO, July 28: Finland will quit the unarmed five-nation Nordic mission monitoring Sri Lanka's battered 2002 truce after a row with Tamil Tiger rebels over an EU terror ban, it said today, as mortar battles and a blast hit the island.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) demanded monitors from European Union states Sweden, Finland and Denmark quit the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) by September 1 after the EU listed them as terrorists alongside Al Qaeda.

Diplomats fear weakening the mission would further undermine the ceasefire, raising the risk of a new civil war. Sweden, which provides the mission's head, has yet to say whether it will pull out. Sri Lanka wants all three nations to stay.

''Finland is the first country to pull out its observers,'' said Marita Maunula, in charge of the civil crisis management operation at the Foreign Ministry of Finland. They would be gone by September 1, she said. ''We were left with no other choice.'' Denmark says it will follow Finland's example and leave if there is no change and no new security guarantee from the Tigers.

If both go, their departure would cut the mission's size by a third at a time when it is monitoring the bloodiest period since the ceasefire, with more than 800 dead so far this year.

Violence continued today across the north and east, where the Tigers want a separate Tamil homeland. The two sides traded mortar fire in the east while a rickshaw exploded at a rebel checkpoint which the military said was a possible suicide attack.

The government accuses the Tigers of choking the flow of water to thousands of majority ethnic Sinhalese farmers in government-held territory in the district of Trincomalee, where the government and rebels both control land.

ANGRY MONKS, EXPLODING RICKSHAW

The government bombed the rebels for two days and today said it returned fire after the rebels fired mortars. The army warns it may send ground troops to take over the water supply. The Tigers say Tamil civilians closed the reservoir sluice to demand that the government build water towers in Tamil areas.

Hardline Buddhist monks in saffron robes vehemently opposed to the Tigers and allied Rajapakse took matters into their own hands on Friday, and made their way towards the sluice gate.

''We have got possession of the sluice key,'' said Udaya Gammanpila, Deputy Secretary of the all-Buddhist monk party Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), adding hundreds of villagers had joined six monks there. ''The government is scared of the terrorists and is inactive, so we have taken it upon ourselves to address the needs of the people.'' Further south, ceasefire monitors said a three-wheeled rickshaw blew up with two people still inside just outside a rebel checkpoint in the eastern Batticaloa district.

Local Tiger political leader Daya Mohan said the military had intended to drive the rickshaw onto the checkpoint and blow it up.

He said their were no rebel casualties but that he had seen two human heads by the wreckage.

''Their aim was to come into our area, get off and explode the vehicle,'' he said. ''But only one got off in time.'' The military denied any involvement but said they believed it might be a suicide attack on the rebels. In Batticaloa, the Tigers are also facing renegade ex-LTTE members the Karuna group, who many diplomats believe are now army backed.

The Tigers have repeatedly used Black Tiger suicide bombers but none of their opponents have ever utilised them.

REUTERS