The Sri Lankan government blocked the visit of the UN's World Food Programme director to the northern rebel-held town of Kilinochchi, a WFP spokeswoman said Saturday. "We have not been given clearance to go to Kilinochchi" by government officials, spokeswoman Selvi Sachithanandam told AFP. WFP director James T. Morris is on a tour of tsunami-ravaged Asia, including a two-day visit to Sri Lanka which wraps up on Sunday and was supposed to include areas under the control of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
"Kilinochchi was supposed to be on the itinerary tomorrow morning and I'm afraid we're not going to be able to do that... It's very disappointing," she said without providing further details.
But the government immediately denied they had turned down the visit to the Tamil Tiger area, as it struggles to respond to the December 26 tsunamis which left nearly 31,000 people dead.
"The government has no objections whatsoever to this visit to Kilinochchi. The defence ministry, the foreign minister, they have cleared his visit," secretary of public security Tilak Ranavirajah told AFP.
"There is absolutely no objection. We have not prevented him going there."
Ranavirajah said the Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) normally needs to approve such visits.
An SLMM spokeswoman told AFP giving the nod for visits to rebel strongholds did not fall within its jurisdiction.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga had last week blocked United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan from visiting rebel-controlled regions of the north and the east during his two-day visit to the island nation, heightening tensions between the two sides.
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