Don’t mess with ceasefire: LTTE to Lanka PM

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse’s pledge to amend the terms of a truce with the Tamil Tigers if elected president next mont...

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Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse’s pledge to amend the terms of a truce with the Tamil Tigers if elected president next month could cause the agreement to collapse, the rebels warned on Monday.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) insist the government sticks to the terms of the existing 2002 ceasefire, but have vowed not to restart their two-decade war for self-rule and observers expect the truce to hold. Stung by European Union sanctions after the August assassination of the island’s foreign minister by suspected rebel snipers, the Tigers want the international community to put pressure on the government to share $3 billion in tsunami aid before the stalled peace process can progress.

“According to the ceasefire agreement and the peace process, the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE are the only equal partners … So nobody can change it. Nobody can touch it,” S. Puleedevan, head of the rebels’ Peace Secretariat, said in a telephone interview from the Tigers’ Kilinochchi stronghold. “Nobody can take unilateral decisions … that means that that’s the end of the ceasefire agreement,” he added.

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Rajapakse has vowed in his manifesto to amend the ceasefire and monitoring mechanism “to ensure that acts of terrorism would not be permitted in any way”.

Forging election pacts with hardline Marxists and Buddhist monks who hate the Tigers, he has also ruled out wide devolution, rejects outright the rebels’ central demand for a Tamil homeland and has promised to ditch a tsunami aid-sharing plan that has run aground in the courts.

But while many say Sri Lanka’s peace process stands a better chance under opposition leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe and his United National Party, which brokered the ceasefire and which has promised to devolve power to the rebels , the Tigers trust neither candidate.

“Experience (since the truce) clearly shows that we have lost hope with both sides,” Puleedevan said. “Whatever they said in their manifestos is nothing to do with what they will implement. We have no choice at all with these two candidates (because neither) are going to deliver anything tangible to the Tamil people.” —Reuters