SARASALAI (Sri Lanka), Aug 22: The United States on Thursday said it will “forcefully push” for a peaceful settlement to Sri Lanka’s drawn-out Tamil separatist war which has claimed over 60,000 lives since 1972.

US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the highest ranking US official to visit this remote village in the embattled northern peninsula of Jaffna, said the destruction here reminded him of his stint in Vietnam.

He said “enough was enough” and he was encouraging the government of Sri Lanka and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to seek a peaceful solution to the long-running conflict.

“I served six years in Vietnam and it reminds me of nothing more than the villages there. It is a keen reminder that enough is enough,” Armitage said. “Let us resolve differences peacefully rather than through shot and shell.

“Seeing what you have seen here is all the encouragement one needs to push as forcefully as we can (to settle the conflict). The answers lie here. It is up to the government and the LTTE to resolve their differences peacefully.”

He met with four university academics at the Bishop’s House in Jaffna, 20 kilometres west of here, and met with reporters for a third time during his visit to the region and reiterated Washington’s support for peace.

“The peace process underway can show the way for the rest of the world where there is such conflict,” Armitage said, adding that he was visiting Jaffna peninsula to show their friendship with “all the people of Sri Lanka.”

Armitage, who inspected a US-funded demining project in this impoverished village said Washington was willing to continue assistance for such humanitarian programmes.

The US state-department’s Quick Reaction Demining Force has been deployed here since May 22 and the team has unearthed 772 mines and 81 unexploded ordnance in a 50,000 square meter area.—AFP