Sri Lanka's military will continue to battle the island's Tamil Tigers if provoked, President Mahinda Rajapakse said on Monday, amid fears sporadic fighting between the foes could derail peace talks due later this month.
Residents in the besieged army-held northern Jaffna peninsula heard barrages of artillery and multi-barrel rocket fire roar into the sky before dawn, but violence has subsided sharply since a major military offensive into rebel territory on Friday.
"(The president) emphasised that the government would be compelled to take appropriate counter-measures to ensure security if the LTTE were to continue with violent and provocative actions," Rajapakse's office said in a statement after he met ambassadors from the island's main donor nations - the United States, Japan, the European Union and Norway.
Rajapakse's warning comes after the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) issued one of their own on Saturday. Rebel political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan wrote a letter to mediator Norway's special peace envoy saying that the Tigers might pull out of talks planned in Geneva on October 28-29 if the military continued to attack.
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