April 05, 2007	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 16, 1428

COLOMBO, April 4: The Sri Lankan government is considering holding a referendum on the ceasefire arrangement with the Tamil Tigers in the wake of Monday’s bomb explosion, blamed on the LTTE. The explosion, in Ampara, killed 16 people.

The State owned Sunday Observer said in a report that President Mahinda Rajapakse is seriously considering holding a referendum to decide, whether the government should continue to abide by the controversial Ceasefire Agreement (CFA). The agreement was signed in February 2002. Paradoxically on Tuesday Foreign Minister Rohitha Bohollagama declared in New Delhi that a devolution package for Tamil speaking areas would be announced within two months.

'We will make the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) stakeholders in a negotiated settlement,' Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama had reportedly told journalists a day before the commencement of the 14th Saarc Summit in Delhi. According to the blood splattered ceasefire agreement signed in February 2002 between the then Ranil Wickremesinghe government and the LTTE, both sides can pull out after giving two weeks notice to the international peace monitoring team known as the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM).

The spokesman for the SLMM, Thorfinnur Omarsson when contacted said the group had not been formally informed of a referendum while the LTTE has not offered any comment on the issue.

“They are already at war with us but if they intend to pull out of the cease-fire agreement it means they want to intensify the war,” Seevaratnam Puleedevan, a senior rebel official, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying.

“Neither the government security forces nor the LTTE appear to be taking adequate precautions to protect civilian lives. The 2002 ceasefire agreement is effectively in tatters”, the report said.

The renewed triggers of war and peace comes as the LTTE raised security concerns both locally and internationally by becoming the world’s first insurgent group to use air power to bomb the Air Force base in Katunayake, next to the Bandaranaike International Airport on March 26. The attack has led to other speculations that the rebels might be working on acquiring underwater vessels and building a mini-submarine as part of its new arsenal and military analysts warn that a formal withdrawal from the ceasefire would mean that both the rebels and the government would use its ‘maximum’ military might.

“How the government and the LTTE will respond now, whether these two parties will lead the country to war or to peace will affect this entire nation like it has never before. Both the military and the LTTE is out to prove that their military capability is a force to be a reckoned with and this will be disastrous to a country that has thousands languishing in refugee camps”, a military analyst said.