COLOMBO: The LTTE suicide attack on a Navy speed boat last Saturday, just three weeks prior to the scheduled second round of peace talks in April, has once again raised fears of the troubled ceasefire between the Tiger rebels and the government exploding into war.
Saturday’s incident, which killed six Tiger rebels and eight Navy sailors, comes in the wake of intelligence reports that the Tigers were transporting war-like material from a ship in the high seas off the south coast and overall indication that the rebels were preparing for war.
Military spokesperson Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said the rebels are increasingly prowling the north and western seas transporting war equipment in the guise of fishermen and confirmed there were aircraft parts, missiles and explosives on board the trawler blown up last Saturday.
Commenting on Saturday’s incident which has put the Navy on high alert, Samarasinghe said the sailors had detected the trawler with six men about 17 nautical miles from the north western seas in Puttalam.
The explosion had taken place when the Navy had ordered the trawler to stop.
However, the Nordic truce monitors have not accused the rebels outright for the suicide attack, the first major incident since the rebels and the government met for face to face talks in February breaking a deadlock of over three years.
Instead, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission which condemned the attack said in a statement that they could not rule out Tiger rebel involvement.
The LTTE’s peace secretariat chief, S. Puleedevan contacted by the media denied that the trawler belonged to the LTTE sea Tiger wing.
The Tiger rebels do not have a record of admitting their suicide attacks or assassinations and have also denied the assassination of Foreign Minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar last August and the suicide attack on a naval craft in January which killed 13 navy sailors.
In the midst of the deteriorating security condition Norwegian embassy spokesperson Tom Knapskog said talks had commenced on Wednesday in London between Norwegian special peace envoy to Sri Lanka, Eric Solheim and LTTE chief peace negotiator, Anton Balasingham.
Sources say Balasingham had requested Norway to pressurize the Sri Lankan government to disarm para-military groups, a key demand laid by the rebels at the February peace talks.
The government and the military maintain that there are no armed groups operating in government-controlled areas in the north and east. Meanwhile peace activists say they are alarmed that the heightening of hostilities between the LTTE and the government comes at a time when there is a rise in agitation by anti-LTTE groups in the South to remove Norway from the role of peace facilitator.
“The role of Norway is important. It is clear that the reason why the LTTE is slow to instigate a full scale war is because of international mediation,” Dr. Jehan Perera, Media Director of the National Peace Council, the Colombo-based peace lobby, noted.
The government ally, the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramnuna (JVP) and the JHU, the all monk political party, are agitating for the removal of Norway on the grounds that it is partial to the LTTE.
