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Sri Lankan govt asks Tamil rebels to return to negotiations

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

New Delhi, Sept 24, IRNA
Lanka-LTTE-Negotiations
Sri Lankan government has extended an olive branch to the Tamil Tiger rebels by offering to halt the military operations against them if they return to the negotiating table for the peace talks, said Gotabhaya Rajapakse in Colombo, Sunday.

"The decision is theirs (LTTE's) and I believe they wouldn't reject the opportunity," Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse said in an interview to "Sunday Island' newspaper in Colombo, Sunday.

Asking the rebels to make a "genuine" effort at the negotiating table, Gotabhaya, brother of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse, said the government would not exploit "an environment conducive for further military action" if the rebels opted for peace talks.

His comments came ahead of the Sri Lankan President's scheduled address at the 62nd United Nations Summit in New York on September 25 in which he is expected to mention his initiatives to solve the ethnic problem.

Sri Lanka's civil war that flared up in 1983 and went into a brief lull after a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire in 2002, has led to deaths of over 5,000 people in a new wave of fighting, including
ssassinations and air strikes over the past 22 months.

"The LTTE determinedly pressed for an over-whelming military victory in the northeast. Had they succeeded, they would have been in a position to call the shots. As they no longer had the wherewithal to regain the battlefield initiative, they should strive to seek a peaceful settlement", the Defence Secretary said.

The LTTE's website Tamilnet said the rebels were still confining themselves to a defensive war and maintaining "patience".

"The LTTE is maintaining patience and still restricting itself to a defensive war," S P Tamilchelvan, head of the rebels' political wing, told the website. He refrained from making any direct reference to the loss of the Eastern Province in July.

The government is attempting to escalate the island's ethnic conflict to "hitherto unseen heights" by breaking up ethnic-Tamil communities in areas it now controls, Thamilchelvan alleged.

A government minister had last week denied plans to divide districts in the Eastern and Northern Provinces.

"Without caring for international policies and passive requests, the government of Sri Lanka is continuing its genocidal war against the Tamil people," Tamilselvan charged, adding the concerns raised by the international community have failed to make any dent on the "ethnic cleansing by the Colombo government which has proved itself a terrorist state".

Meanwhile, another Lankan newspaper 'Sunday Observer', quoting defence sources, said seven LTTE cadres surrendered to the security forces along with their weapons on Friday on the outskirts of the Wanni region and that more surrenders were in the offing.

"The LTTE cadres surrendered to the security forces after we started attacking the main targets of the LTTE. The cadres have lost faith on account of attacks on their lives and property," the paper quoted the defence sources as saying.

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