Fanoos spares Jaffna

The Meteorology Department said yesterday that the cyclone 'Fanoos' was centred about 70km Northeast of Jaffna at 9.00 a.m. and was unlikely to hit the North - East coastal belt.

Speaking to Sunday Observer, Deputy Director of Met Department S.H.Kariyawasam said "based on previous motions of the cyclone we could say that it would not hit the coastal belt. But Northern part of the island would experience strong winds and heavy intermittent showers".

However, he said, timely warnings had been given to people living in coastal areas and fishers were told not to go fishing and engage in any naval activities.

The sea areas off the coast extending from Mannar to Mullaitivu through Jaffna will experience very rough conditions according to the Met Department. The coastal belt extending from Jaffna to Kalpitiya may be inundated by sea waves generated by strong winds, it said.

Meanwhile, Additional District Secretary, Mannar Nicholas Pillai confirmed that there were no reports of cyclone experience or damages caused by strong winds so far. There has been a continuous drizzle in Mannar, he said.

An NGO official based in Jaffna said that there was heavy rain in the peninsula on Friday night but no sign of a serious threat. He also said that people, especially the fishers, had been alerted of the possible danger.

Tamilnet website reported that strong 50-60 kmph wind has caused damages to roofs and houses in the low lying areas had been flooded. Some families in Vadamarachchi North and East have sought shelter at schools and community centres.

Rebels warn Sri Lanka last chance to avert war

KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka - Sri Lanka’s government faces its final opportunity to avert a return to a civil war, the Tamil Tigers have warned, vowing to use all available resources to fight unless given a homeland.

The Tigers, who used suicide bombers to devastating effect in their drive for autonomy and have threatened to resume their struggle next year unless given political powers in the north and east, said their deadline depends on new President Mahinda Rajapakse’s response.

“We don’t prefer war. If a war is thrusted on the Tamil people, the Tamil people and the LTTE (will) make use of all the resources available to fight back,” S.P. Thamilselvan, head of the Tigers’ political wing, told Reuters in the northern rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi in an interview late on Friday.

“We consider this is an important final opportunity,” he added, saying the Tigers would give Colombo a “short space” to come up with a peace blueprint that accepts their demands for a homeland for ethnic Tamils and self-determination.

“Whether the short space is going to be first half, mid or the latter half (of 2006) is in the hands of Colombo.”

Rajapakse, allied to hardline Marxists and Buddhists who detest the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), has already ruled out a separate homeland for Tamils outright.

A surge in attacks against the military, which culminated in two claymore mine blasts this month that killed 14 soldiers in the northern Jaffna peninsula, have raised fears of a return to a war that killed over 64,000 people up until a 2002 truce.

The Tigers, accused of assassinating the island’s foreign minister in August, deny any hand in attacks on military patrols and sentries -- which analysts say is a stock denial -- and the ceasefire is at its lowest ebb.

Some tsunami aid workers are considering pulling out of coastal rebel territory and Colombo’s stock exchange has plunged amid fears a return to war will torpedo any hope of an influx of much-needed foreign investment into the $20 billion economy.

Fighting words

“Any living being if challenged or if tortured or if threatened of its existence will fight back, that is nature’s law, and we human beings are no exception and we Tamils are no exception,” Thamilselvan, 38, said in his native Tamil through a translator.

The armed forces’ claim on Friday that they could defeat the Tigers if war resumes was a provocative mistake, he added.

“We take it as an egotistic and supremacist thinking mode in which the Sri Lankan forces behave,” he said. “It is a ridiculous thing for the military to say things like that and most irresponsible... What type of a victory would that be?”

“Even after facing defeat in several instances at the hands of the LTTE, the military has not learnt proper lessons.”

Any resumption of hostilities would be a major setback for plans to restore crumbling infrastructure like roads, hit by years of under-investment as war swallowed state resources.

The road from Jaffna to Kilinochchi is still lined with the charred remains of homes shelled to oblivion before the truce, segments of wall still standing pockmarked where strafed with bullets.

Analysts say the Tigers have used the ceasefire to regroup and rearm, and say the fact they scuppered the chances of Rajapakse’s moderate rival during last month’s presidential election with a boycott that scared hundreds of thousands of Tamils from voting, shows they are not ready for lasting peace.

The rebels, who have also sustained losses blamed on feuding with a renegade faction they accuse the military of supporting, have called on the international community to ensure Rajapakse and the military implement the terms of the ceasefire.

“The ceasefire agreement is the bedrock of the entire peace process and is at grave risk,” Thamilselvan said.

“In the event of all else failing, after exhaustion of all avenues of considering viable alternatives, then the Tamil people will have to exercise their right to self determination.”

Tigers demand urgent talks to defuse Sri Lanka war fears

Tamil Tiger rebels have asked Norway to arrange urgent peace talks with Colombo to prevent Sri Lanka from sliding back into war after 31 people died in a week of violence.

A report on the website of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) says they have told Norway's top envoy here, Hans Brattskar, immediate negotiations should begin to maintain a tenuous truce in place since February 2002.

"Our commitment to the ceasefire and the peace process remains undiluted and what we request now is to urgently arrange a high-level meeting between the parties...," said the LTTE's political wing leader S. P. Thamilselvan.

In a report on their official website, the LTTE said only face-to-face negotiations could "bring about normalcy and avoid confrontational postures between the civilians and the occupying military."

There was no immediate comment from the government or the Norwegians.

The LTTE leader flatly rejected a call by new President Mahinda Rajapakse to revise the ceasefire and dismissed Rajapakse's election pledge to abandon plans to turn the country into a federal state in exchange for ethnic peace.

The government of Rajapakse -- who had earlier promised to overhaul the peace bid and review the role of the Norwegians -- on Wednesday did a U-turn and asked Oslo to stay on.

"It is true that Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse went to town with rigid stances relating to the 'unitary state' and the necessity to review the ceasefire," said Thamilselvan.

"But the ground realities and hard facts dictate there is no need to review the ceasefire for it is comprehensive and all-encompassing and what is needed is implementation of what has been agreed upon between the parties," he said.

He said the "rigid stance" of sticking to a unitary state may have been an election campaign ploy, but it was not helpful to resolving the decades-old ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil communities.

Rajapakse was elected president last month.

The Tigers agreed in December 2002 to settle for a federal state rather than full independence, but direct talks between the guerrillas and Colombo have been stalemated since April 2003.

Diplomatic efforts to revive the process also remain deadlocked.

Following a surge in violence in the embattled northern and eastern regions that began last week, the military declared Friday it was ready to meet "any terrorist challenge."

The chief of defence staff, Daya Sandagiri, however, said it did not expect the country to slip back into full-scale war.

Rajapakse asked Norwegian envoy Brattskar to keep up peace brokering efforts even though two key allies of his government had insisted Norway be expelled from the peace process, accusing it of favouring the rebels.

Norway has said the two parties must agree to certain unspecified conditions before it resumes the role of peace facilitator in a country where more than 60,000 people have died in ethnic violence since 1972.