COLOMBO, Jan 7: Sri Lanka hit the Tamil Tigers on Wednesday with a terrorist designation it lifted as part of ill-fated 2002 truce, as soldiers pressured the separatists’ last stronghold on the Jaffna Peninsula.

Though largely symbolic since the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are already on US, EU and Indian terrorist lists and the government routinely calls them that, the cabinet vote is just one more sign Sri Lanka has no plans to negotiate.

“The cabinet has decided to ban the LTTE as they are not allowing civilians to leave the war zone,” said defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella, also a minister.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa had given the LTTE until the New Year to free civilians which rights group say the rebels are keeping as human shields and using as fighters or battlefield labourers. The LTTE denies that.

The original ban was imposed on the Tigers in January 1998, and lifted as part of a Norway-brokered truce four years later.

Rajapaksa scrapped the poorly observed truce a year ago, accusing the LTTE of using it to re-arm and vowing to wipe them out.

In that year, the military has recaptured most of northern Sri Lanka and last week took the LTTE’s self-proclaimed capital of Kilinochchi, in a blow to their separatist plans.

Soldiers on Wednesday kept up pressure on the bottleneck linking the main island to the Jaffna Peninsula from two fronts, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

Resistance was lower than on the first day of the assault a day earlier.

“The number of fighters and the volume of fire is lower, in terms of artillery,” he said. The army has sandwiched the LTTE on the thin strip of land, with troops to the north and south.

TIGERS VOW COMEBACK: That 12-km by 6-km wide area, covered with bunkers, landmines and defences, is the only part of the traditionally Tamil land of Jaffna the rebels have controlled since the military seized the rest of the peninsula in 1995.