Roads a bridge between North, South - President

COLOMBO: President Mahinda Rajapaksa made a clarion call to Road Development Authority engineers to commit themselves to merge the gap between the North and the South through the development of road structures in the island.

He was addressing the Road Development Authority Engineers Association Annual General Meeting at the Presidential Secretariat yesterday.

"When the World Bank President came here I spoke to him about the possibility of getting funds to build a highway linking the North and the South. I hope this would materialise as the Road to Peace," President said.

Reiterating the Government's commitment to development against the backdrop of any adverse implications, the President highlighted the importance of developing road infrastructure as a catalyst to development and peace.

"As a Government committed to development we have paid special attention to the development of infrastructure. Our ancestors received world acclaim for their achievements in engineering. Our duty should be to use this as a catalyst in developing a hassle free and development oriented road structure for our future generation," the President said.

"Roads could be used to bridge the gap between village and the city and could be used as a catalyst to prospective investments both local and foreign".

"As the guardians of the roads in our country,the responsibility of future growth is on your shoulders. As such you should take it to your heart to do justice to the free education you received and the faith we all have placed on you with a committed effort to development," he added.

Highways Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle hailed the occasion as a historic one.

"This is the first time a meeting of this nature is being held at the Presidential Secretariat. That in itself shows the Government's stance on the development of roads as a high priority issue".

"Korea has 4,000 km of highways and China has 40,000 km, but we do not even have one kilometre. As such we should all commit ourselves to developing this most important type of infrastructure. We have launched several highway projects," Fernandopulle added.

Both T.B.Ekanayake Minister of Road development and his deputy Rohana Kumara Dissanayake stressed the importance of developing the 64,600 Km road network in the island. Citing a World Bank report Dissanayake said that poverty was prevalent in areas where the road structure was poor. "We should change the trend and use better roads to develop the villagers."

Chairman of the Association Moses Mariyadasan reiterated their commitment to road development behalf of all his colleagues. A web site was launched depicting the work of RDA.

MPs BLAME MANGALA FOR PORT CRISIS

While the port workers' ‘work to rule' protest is continuing for the eighth successive

day, in spite of court enjoining order against the port workers' trade unions, causing losses of hundreds of millions of rupees to national economy each day, Minister of Ports and Shipping Mangala Samaraweera has come under attack from parliamentarians from the opposition parties as well as the ruling party allies.

Former Ports and Shipping Minister and leader of the SLMC Rauff Hakeem MP said in parliament yesterday , July 20, that the demands of the port workers were justifiable in that they were asking for salary increments in keeping with salary increments given to the government employees. They also have demanded that the anomalies on their salary scales should be rectified. The strike which continues for over one week due to the wrong handling of the issue by the present Minister of Ports and Shipping has gravely affected national revenue, he said.

Hakeem said that 19 ships could not berth in the Colombo port due to the current crisis and warned that shipping lines would bypass Colombo port and opt for Singapore or Dubai if the crisis continued. He said this would cause a grave crisis because the Colombo port facilitated 72 percent of transshipment cargo. He also said that the government should take steps to avoid a possible congestion surcharge being imposed on containers at $ 40 per 200 foot container and $ 80 per 40 foot container.

Government ally JVP's parliamentarian Sunil Handunetti and UNP parliamentarian Dr.Rajitha Senaratne accused Minister Samaraweera of resorting to a blame game with port workers instead of trying to resolve the Colombo port crisis which has cost hundreds of millions of rupees daily.

Sri Lanka evacuates 300 from Lebanon -- 92,700 to go

Sri Lanka is facing a logistical nightmare in trying to contact around 93,000 nationals -- mostly housemaids -- working in Lebanon, and has so far managed to evacuate just 300, officials said on Friday. Around 1.5 million Sri Lankans work abroad, most of them women working in the Middle East as domestic staff, and many are not registered with their local embassies -- which are small anyway and do not have the resources to reach so many people in times of crisis.

There are around 93,000 Sri Lankans currently working in Lebanon, 86,000 of them housemaids, said Jagath Wellawatta, Chairman of Sri Lanka's Foreign Employment Bureau. "It is logistically very, very difficult to get in contact with that many people. We have under 500 people waiting to be evacuated, but we hope that number will increase," he said.

"We have very few officials in the Lebanon embassy ... We don't know where people are staying or if they are injured or not," Wellawatta added. "If it is necessary, we are ready to evacuate all Sri Lankan workers."

Sri Lanka has advised all of its nationals to leave Lebanon in the face of deepening conflict between Israel and Hizbollah. Aid groups including Caritas and the International Organisation for Migration are helping to evacuate those who have gathered at Sri Lanka's Lebanon mission to Damascus.

Sri Lankan soldiers escape Tamil rebels' bomb attack in north, says military

A group of 15 Sri Lankan soldiers on a route clearing patrol in a northern town escaped a Tamil Tiger rebels' bomb attack Friday, when the roadside bomb exploded prematurely, the military said. One soldier was, however, sustained minor injuries in the attack near the northern garrison town of Vavuniya, military spokesman, Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said.

``The others escaped the attack by the LTTE,'' Samarasinghe said, blaming the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The bomb exploded prematurely, he said.

The failed attack came amid a surge in violence between the insurgents and the government, threatening a four-year-old cease-fire and raising the prospect of all-out civil war.

Sri Lanka 's Tamil rebels stick to their demand for withdrawal of EU peace monitors

A Swedish diplomat met with top Tamil Tiger officials Friday, but failed to persuade the guerrilla leadership to drop a demand for the withdrawal of European Union peace monitors, the rebels said. The issue is the latest flash point in already strained relations between the rebels and Sri Lanka - 's government.

Anders Oljelund met with S.P. Thamilselvan, the political head of the rebels, and Seevaratnam Puleedevan, the head of the rebels' Peace Secretariat in Kilinochchi, the rebel stronghold in the north.

After the meeting, Thamilselvan told reporters that there was no change in the rebels' position that EU monitors should leave by Sept. 1.

Earlier, government chief spokesman, Keheliya Rambukwella, said in Colombo that Oljelund was ``... trying to persuade the LTTE not to insist on their demand that the EU member states should quit the monitoring team.''

The rebels argue that since the EU in May listed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, as a terrorist group, monitors from Finland, Sweden, and Denmark could no longer be neutral.

Norway and Iceland are also part of the monitoring mission, but are not EU members.

Oljelund arrived in the capital Colombo on Wednesday. He will return to Sweden on Monday.

During their meeting, Thamilselvan also asked Oljelund to press the government to stop alleged harassment of Tamil civilians living in the northeast, the traditional homeland of ethnic Tamils.

No comment was immediately available from Oljelund.

Earlier, government spokesman Rambukwella said the administration wants the EU to continue its role as peace monitors. ``Our stand is clear that the EU member states should remain in the monitoring team,'' he said.

The Tamil Tigers demand comes amid a surge in violence between the insurgents and the government, threatening the four-year-old cease-fire and raising the prospect of all-out civil war.

More than 750 people have died since December with both sides accusing the other of violating the truce. About 65,000 people were killed between 1983 and 2002, when Norway brokered a cease-fire.

The rebels have fought the government demanding a separate homeland for the country's ethnic minority Tamils saying they can only prosper away from the domination of majority Sinhalese.

Associated Press writer Dilip Ganguly contributed to this report from Colombo