COLOMBO, Aug 23: Even as fighting ebbed in the north and the east of the country, the Tamil Tiger rebels on Tuesday brushed aside calls by the government for the guerillas to initiate peace.   S. P. Thamilchelvan, the LTTE political wing leader, was quoted in the pro-rebel website, Tamil Net, as saying the separatists were ‘compelled’ to defend against what they claimed was Sri Lanka’s ‘aggression’.

The LTTE reaction came a day after President Mahinda Rajapakse called for the LTTE chief Vellupillai Prabhakaran to take the peace initiative.

President Rajapakse in a meeting on Monday with the diplomatic community representing the four co-chairs to the Sri Lankan peace process, the European Union, United States, Japan and Norway, had said the government would respond to a peace initiative from the LTTE leader.   However despite the reaction from the LTTE being bleak, analysts say the dying down of the fighting might be a base for the two parties to make one more attempt at dialogue.

Meanwhile, political sources said the government had informed the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna that it was not possible to withdraw from the ceasefire agreement, as demanded by the party.