Sri Lanka Tigers ready for talks, or wider war

Colombo, Sept 12: Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers are ready for talks with the government to halt a new episode of civil war, a top rebel leader said today, but he warned violence would spread if army offensives continued.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) pulled out of peace talks indefinitely in April and a new bout of fighting erupted in late July, killing hundreds of troops, civilians and rebels in the worst violence since a 2002 ceasefire.

''The LTTE is ready for talks,'' Tiger political wing leader SP Thamilselvan told Reuters in an e-mail interview. ''However, the opportunities for resuming the talks will be much stronger when the Sri Lankan government ceases its military attacks and all the (truce) articles are fully respected and implemented.'' There was no immediate response from Sri Lanka's government, but earlier defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told Reuters it was time for the Tigers to ''talk serious business... and get down to the core issues''.

Diplomats reacted cautiously to the rebel offer. Many see little genuine effort from either side to defuse the renewed war, and fear further escalation.

One diplomat said he saw the Tigers offer of talks as a conditional one, dependent on an end to violence, and not necessarily enough to break the impasse.

But another said the comments would be factored in to a meeting of the island's main donors, Japan, the European Union, the United States and Norway, in Brussels later today.

Sri Lanka's military and the Tigers each accuse the other of trying to restart a two-decade civil war that has killed more than 65,000 people since 1983 and forced hundreds of thousands more to flee their homes.

More than 200,000 people have sought refuge in tented camps across the northeast in the past six weeks.

Both sides have mounted offensive operations during the latest bout of fighting. The military has captured rebel territory near the strategic northeastern port of Trincomalee and says it has overrun the Tiger's frontline trenches and bunkers in the Jaffna peninsula in the far north.

Intermittent mortar fire continued along the frontline in Jaffna today, the army said, saying it had advanced around 800 metres across the heavily mined no-man's land since Saturday.

The army said 35 of its soldiers had died and 133 been taken to hospital after the latest clashes.

The Tigers warned that they could take the fight to the largely peaceful south of the island if the army continued to attack ''the Tamil homeland'' in the north and east. ''I am afraid there is a possibility that this will turn into a full scale war,'' Thamilselvan said.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) appealed to both sides to unblock the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid to tens of thousands of people trapped by the conflict.

A ship which arrived in the besieged government-held town of Jaffa last Saturday, carrying 890 tonnes of food provided by the United Nations food agency, had been unable to unload, WFP said, because the Tigers were refusing to grant security guarantees.

''They maintain that the supplies should be taken by road and they won't give security guarantees by sea unless the defence ministry opens a passage point allowing access to the northern region under Tamil control,'' spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told a news conference in Geneva.

''So on the one hand the Tamils are preventing the boats from arriving and the defence ministry is also preventing us from reaching regions under Tamil control,'' she said.

''We are caught up in a total impasse,'' she added.

REUTERS

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