Sri Lanka President vows to tame Tamil Tigers

Vakarai, Sri Lanka, Feb 3: Surveying a newly captured eastern rebel stronghold, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse today vowed to tame the Tamil Tiger rebels and liberate civilians, but said the door remained open to resume peace talks.

Visiting troops in this parched corner of northeast Sri Lanka -- where the ravages of weeks of artillery battles have blended with the destruction wrought by the 2004 tsunami -- Rajapakse called on the Tigers to lay down arms, an idea the rebels laugh off.

Apparently emboldened by the capture of this coastal swathe of jungle and lagoon in Sri Lanka's far north east, the government has vowed to destroy the rebels' military machine, and analysts fear a new episode of a two-decade civil war will escalate.

''We have to tame the Tigers,'' Rajapakse told sources as he toured the former rebel-controlled town of Vakarai around 225 km northeast of Colombo to meet troops and inspect capture rebel artillery guns and mortar bombs.

''But there are two ways of liberating (civilians in Tiger areas). We have offered a political solution. We don't want a military solution.

''This is high time they should come in to the negotiating table without trying to show their fire power and kill people,'' he added. ''I will try my best to get them to the table. It's my duty... They have been refusing, but still as a government we are ready to talk with them.'' Behind him, ragged tents, wooden carts and abandoned belongings sit in thick dust where thousands of refugees who fled fighting as the area was captured last month left them.

Arriving in the area by helicopter, gaping holes stare up from the roofs of homes built by aid organisations for families displaced by the tsunami, which battered this coastal stretch whose golden beaches would be a tourist Mecca if not for the war.

Troops are still clearing away thousands of land mines they say the rebels laid in the area, and the government aims to resettle civilians living in tent city camps further along the coast within weeks.

''First we must remove the mines,'' Rajapakse said. ''Then we have to get equipment in and start a full programme (of development). As soon as that is done, we want to get on and build houses.'' ''It's a good opportunity for them (the Tigers) to come into the democratic process,'' he added. ''A ceasefire should be a ceasefire.'' More than 4,000 troops, civilians and rebels have been killed in the past year alone as a two-decade civil war that has killed more than 67,000 people since 1983 flared, leaving a 2002 ceasefire pact that holds only on paper in tatters.

The United Nations estimates that more than 500,000 people are displaced across the island due to war past and present and the tsunami, but both sides have repeatedly ignored pleas from the international community to halt the fighting.

Reuters