A Tamil Tiger leader accused the Sri Lankan government on Tuesday of denying international mediators access to the rebels and said Colombo was not ready for peace talks. The government rejected the rebels' claim.
Seevaratnam Puleedevan, secretary-general of the rebels' Peace Secretariat, said in a telephone interview that 20,000 civilians had been displaced in the government's latest offensive against the Tiger's northern stronghold. Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war reignited in 2006, dealing a blow to tourism and deterring some investors, and fighting has intensified since the government annulled a 6-year-old Norwegian-brokered truce in January.
"Sri Lanka armed forces are losing a lot of soldiers ... many more (losses) will come if they inch into LTTE territory," said Puleedevan, referring to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam who are fighting for an independent state in the north and east.
Analysts say the military has the upper hand in the latest phase of the long-running war. The army drove the Tigers out of their eastern enclave last year, but the rebels have held most of their northern territory and hit back with bombings in Colombo.
"The heavy fighting is going on, at the FDL (Forward Defence Line)," Puleedevan said from the rebel's stronghold in the north of the Indian Ocean island. "We have inflicted a lot of damage on the Sri Lankan armed forces. They are unable to gain any territory."
Puleedevan said the military had captured little territory in the main areas of fighting of northern Mannar and Weli-Oya. The military denied the rebels' claims. "If we have not advanced, how can we capture lines and recover bodies?" said military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara. "Puleedevan is telling total lies. They want to uplift the moral of their cadres by giving all the lies."
President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government, dominated by the Sinhalese majority, has promised devolution and development in recaptured areas, while vowing to destroy the Tigers militarily by the end of the year.
Nordic ceasefire monitors quit the country this year after the ragged truce disintegrated, and Puleedevan was pessimistic about the chances of renewed peace efforts, accusing the government of refusing to let Norwegian facilitators meet the rebels. "We have to first discuss with the facilitators. We want to know what is their thinking. The Sri Lankan government is not ready for that, that's the problem," he said.
"The important thing is we need to have one-to-one meetings in person, but the government is not allowing them to visit. They are preventing them." The secretary-general of the government's peace secretariat Rajiva Wijesinghe said the government also wanted to take peace process forward.
"We have told the Norwegians that there are things we want to talk about ... (but) it's not a photo opportunity." Wijesinghe said the government could not allow the rebels to re-group and re-arm again under the name of peace process. "Peace talks are used by the LTTE to build up its military strength and killing capacity in the guise of peace talks," he told Reuters. The protracted civil war has killed more than 70,000 people.
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