COLOMBO: The white flags and banners fluttering all over Sri Lanka this week told the plaintive tale of a country yearning for peace that is rapidly ebbing away

The flags were put up to mourn the 63 unarmed civilians killed on June 14 in a claymore mine attack in north-central Kapathigollawa, in the worst violation yet of a Norway-mediated ceasefire signed between Tamil Tiger rebels and the government in February 2002.

“We are witnessing a spiral of worsening violence, which is taking Sri Lanka towards full civil war,” said Nowegian peace broker Erik Solheim, chief of the 64-man all-Scandinavian Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), that is about to be reduced to half its strength.

After the European Union declared the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) last month a terrorist organization, the position of 37 monitors from Denmark, Finland and Sweden has became untenable and the LTTE has formally asked that they leave. “It is a blow to the peace process,” SLMM spokesman Thorfinnur Omarsson told IPS.

With about 20 monitors from non-EU Scandinavian countries Norway and Iceland left, the SLMM is severely crippled at a time when it is needed most. Omarsson said new monitors, that would replace those leaving, will have to be from non-EU Nordic countries. “Otherwise we would have to amend the ceasefire agreement where article 3.5 says that monitors would be from Nordic states.”

After discussions, on Wednesday, with LTTE political head S.P. Tamilselvan at the Tiger headquarters of Killinochi, Norwegian ambassador Hans Brattskar told presspersons that Norway, as facilitator, had to take note of LTTE’s point of view. “It is very clear that the LTTE feels that it is not able to continue cooperation with the countries that have listed (proscribed) the LTTE.”

Brattskar said Norway and the Nordic countries would be discussing the issue with the Sri Lankan government and that an official statement would be released on June 29.

Following the massacre, the government launched retaliatory air strikes on Tiger-held areas and both sides have upped the war rhetoric. President Mahinda Rajapakse visited the massacre site within hours of the attack and vowed to take all necessary actions to thwart any more attacks. There are plans to erect a fence along the border areas.

Some of Rajapakse’s nationalist allies like the People’s Liberation Front (PLF) have increased pressure on the president to deal firmly with the Tigers. The LTTE is not backing down either.

“We have described in details the atrocities by the Sri Lanka Air Force and firmly told the (Norwegian) ambassador that there is a limit to our patience and we will be forced to intensify our ‘defensive actions’ against the ‘undeclared war’ being conducted by the government of Sri Lanka,” Tamilselvan said, after meeting Brattskar.

The Rajapakse government has been pushing for amendments to the truce since assuming office in November last year. Despite both sides repeatedly expressing commitment to the truce, since then, the nation has been sliding steadily towards war.

In Killinochi, civilians have begun digging trenches behind their homes to escape aerial bombardments, bringing back painful memories of the conflict.

Thousands of civilians have also been imparted basic military training said Tiger media coordinator Daya Master, adding that training was required so that the civilians would be in a position to face attacks.

Checkpoints have been increased in Colombo where fears of an attack were heightened last week when several Tiger suspects were caught just north of the main harbour, carrying explosives.

The Tigers announced that they had appointed a new military spokesman to speak to the press in Killinochi. Observers identified the move as posturing meant to signal that the emphasis had shifted from dialogue to the gun. With the drastic reduction in the strength of the SLMM, demands have grown from both the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers for greater intervention by Sri Lanka’s giant neighbour, India, which has been studiously keeping a distance from the festering conflict.

“The government of India should accept and recognise our liberation struggle, extend its moral support and condemn the atrocities of the Sri Lankan state. It is the stand of the LTTE as well as the desire of our people,” Tamilselvan said.

While the LTTE was banned in India, after the 1991 assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi by a Sri Lankan suicide bomber, there is much sympathy for the Tamil cause among ethnic kin in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Gandhi’s assassination was ordered by LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran in revenge for Indian military intervention to enforce a tripartite peace accord signed among the LTTE, Colombo and New Delhi in 1987. That accord failed.

But India cannot continue to ignore the fact that Sri Lankan Tamil refugees have been streaming steadily into Tamil Nadu fleeing the escalation in hostilities between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan army. An estimated 3,000 refugees have crossed over the Palk Straits in crude boats since December 2005.

Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister M. Karunandhi has called on the central government to intervene in Sri Lanka. So also has the leader of the opposition in the state and former chief minister Jayaraman Jayala-lithaa.

—Dawn/IPS News Service