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Defense chief calls for end to ceasefire

The Sri Lankan defense secretary said the government should formally pull out of a ceasefire with Tamil Tiger rebels amid escalating fighting in the island, a state-run daily reported yesterday.

A 2002 Norwegian-brokered truce began to unravel in December 2005 and both sides have blamed each other for the mounting violence which has claimed over 6,000 lives since then, government figures showed.

"The ceasefire agreement exists only on paper. Obviously we can see there is no ceasefire," Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who is President Mahinda Rajapakse's younger brother, told the Daily News.

"It has become a joke," the defense secretary said.

"I think the most sensible thing is that we must end this ceasefire agreement by officially declaring there is no ceasefire agreement," he said.

The internationally backed deal requires either party to give two weeks' notice to Norway before formally ending it.

"Why should we hoodwink the people by saying there is a ceasefire agreement?" Rajapakse said, adding that the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam should be formally banned.

"It is a terrorist organization and we are fighting them," he said.

His remarks came three days after the president ruled out holding negotiations with the Tigers before the army is able to crush them militarily.

Security forces wrested control of the east of the island from the rebels in July. The military has also claimed sinking the entire fleet of gun-running ships of the guerrillas.

The rebels are fighting for a separate state for the ethnic Tamil minority in the Sinhalese-majority country.

Tens of thousands of people have died on both sides since the conflict erupted in 1972.

Sri Lankan soldiers meanwhile launched a pre-dawn attack on a Tamil Tiger rebel bunker early yesterday, killing two insurgents. A soldier and a rebel were killed in two separate attacks a day earlier, the military said.

Troops attacked a rebel bunker ahead of a defense line that separates government and rebel-held territories in the northern Muhamalai region around 2:50am, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

He said the rebel bunker was destroyed and the soldiers suffered no casualties.

On Friday, soldiers and rebels clashed in Nagarkovil village northeast of Muhamalai leaving one guerrilla dead, Nanayakkara said.

One soldier died in a separate clash on Friday in Narikkulam village of northern Mannar district, he said.

Phone calls to rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan's office went unanswered and there was no independent confirmation of the details of the clashes because journalists are barred from the conflict areas.
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