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| Sri Lankan President Still for Peace with Tiger Rebels |
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Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse said Sunday that he was still committed to the internationally backed cease-fire with the Tamil Tigers despite continued acts of violence perpetrated by the rebel group. Rajapakse was reacting to Saturday's attack by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on a Navy fast attack craft at the eastern port of Trincomalee. Addressing a religious public gathering at Horana, 38 km southeast of the capital Colombo, the president said the LTTE attack was "a blatant violation of the cease-fire agreement" and added that "I am ready at any time to open talks for a negotiated peaceful settlement." However, the president warned the LTTE that he would neither turn blind nor deaf in the face of violence. The LTTE destroyed the Naval craft at around 1:00 AM local time on Saturday (19:00 GMT, Friday) in what is believed to be a suicide attack, killing some 13 sailors. Commenting on the incident, the government spokesman and Health Minister Nimal Siripala De Silva said Sri Lanka would move to educate the international community on the LTTE's violation of the cease-fire agreement of February 2002. The Sri Lankan president, narrowly elected in November, was seen to be adopting a hard-line towards the LTTE due to his electoral alliances with the two extremist parties the JVP and the JHU. The Tiger leader in his annual Heroes Day speech late November warned that the Tigers would be forced to pursue its independence struggle unless the Rajapakse administration came up with a credible solution to the armed conflict. The LTTE since December has killed 40 soldiers in four separate claymore mine attacks against the government troops in Jaffna prior to Saturday's attack on the Naval craft in the east. (Xinhua News Agency January 9, 2006) |
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