Norwegian-led peace monitors met with Tamil Tiger rebel leaders yesterday to discuss a "dangerous" split among the guerrillas, officials said.
The meeting in the rebel-held northern town of Kilinochchi came a day after a senior rebel said more than a third of the Tigers, or about 6,000 guerrillas, in eastern Sri Lanka had split off from the main insurgent army because of disputes over the deployment of fighters.
"I can confirm that the meeting has started," said Agnes Bragadottir, spokeswoman of the Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission. She declined to give details. Kilinochchi is 275km north of Colombo.
Word of the rift, a month ahead of nationwide elections, is a blow to the rebels, who until now have been largely united in their 19-year war for a separate homeland. Although the split is unlikely to set off factional fighting, dissension among rebel ranks is seldom tolerated.
The guerrillas tried to present a united front yesterday. An unidentified spokesman for Karuna, the head of the eastern faction, denied there was a schism and pledged allegiance to the Tiger "leader," an apparent reference to top guerrilla leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran.
"We will be functioning directly under the command of our leader," the Karuna spokesman was quoted as saying by the TamilNet Web site, which reports on rebel affairs.
But a senior official from Karuna's office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that Karuna was heading a new faction after arguing with Prabhakaran over sending new recruits from the east to the north.
The official said Karuna felt that rebel leaders in the north had taken young fighters as well as other resources from the east, but not given anything back.
Prabhakaran will now command an estimated 9,000 troops, he added.
The official said the split would not lead to fighting between the rebel factions.
However, some rebels who have tried to leave the group in the past have been killed.
The split is likely to hamper efforts by Norwegian negotiators to secure a peace deal between the rebels and the government. Hagrup Haukland, deputy head of the peace monitoring team, described it as a "dangerous situation."
"We need to look closely at what's happening," Haukland said ahead of the trip.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS