LTTE rejects Indian backed settlement

LTTE rejects Indian backed settlement
Army confident Tigers couldn’t reverse ground situationThe LTTE has denounced the government's plan for devolution under which local government
elections and the first election to the Eastern Provincial Council were held recently, emphasizing that ‘Tamil sovereignty and right to self-determination’
were key issues for a negotiated settlement.
Vowing to continue fighting for a separate state, LTTE political head B. Nadesan has told Tamilnet that the 13th Amendment providing for separate
Provincial Councils in the East and North wouldn’t be acceptable.
Meanwhile Army Chief Lt. General Sarath Fonseka said his troops were on the offensive in the north and they would soon crush remaining LTTE
fighting formations holed up in the Vanni. Fonseka said the offensive was on track and he was satisfied with the progress on the Vanni and Welioya
fronts. He said the LTTE was not in a position to reverse the situation. In fact, they were in a desperate position, he said.
The website report posted on Friday quoted the former policeman as saying, "Sri Lankan Tamils have rejected the 13th Amendment. In the last 21-
years of its introduction, neither Tamils nor Sinhalese have shown any enthusiasm towards the 13th amendment." Nadesan emphasized that Tamil
sovereignty and right to self-determination were key issues in creating a climate for a negotiated settlement.
"How can one consider it as a basis for settlement when it has been proven that people have no interest in it?," Nadesan told Tamilnet.
India has endorsed Sri Lanka's policy of implementation of the 13th Amendment under which Provincial Council elections for the East took place on
May 10, paving the way for the breakaway LTTE faction, the TMVP which contested on the government ticket to take control of the EPC.
Experience had convinced the "Tamils to decide on a separate state and to fight for it," he stressed. "As this has been the logical end for situations
similar to that of the Tamils, in different parts of the contemporary world, it is a puzzle what makes it different only in the case of the Eelam Tamils," he
said
Nadesan has reiterated their call for international intervention."Development is possible only when there is permanent peace. To achieve peace, the
international community should restore the status quo which it had disturbed in recent times. He urged the international community to pressure the
government to come to terms with a negotiated settlement.
Accusing the government of not providing access to Norwegian facilitators to visit Vanni to meet with LTTE representatives, Nadesan said the LTTE
had requested the Royal Norwegian Government to continue the facilitation. He claimed the government ignored a request by Co-Chairs to the peace
process, the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Norway to provide the facilitator access to Kilinochchi. "Norwegian Special Envoy and
the Norwegian Ambassador to Sri Lanka have expressed their desire to have dialogue, "he said.

Demitarisation of Tigers precondition for conflict-resolution Dayan Jayatilleka
Monday, 02 June 2008
Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva said in an interview that a negotiated settlement to Sri Lanka's
conflict is still possible but not before the Tigers are "verifiably demilitarised and democratized.'
Jayatilleka said that negotiated settlement is possible but not with the Tigers, and certainly not with Prabhakaran.
Referring in some detail to the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by an LTTE suicide bomber, Jayatilleka said of
Prabhakaran: "With him there can be no peace."
He said that the conflict would only end when Velupillai Prabhakaran, the elusive and feared leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE),
gets "demilitarised one way or another".
With respect to the ongoing military offensive, he said, "It will all end the way it all ended in Angola after decades of conflict when (rebel leader) Jonas
Savimbi was killed by the Angolan Armed Forces.
"It will all end the way it did in Chechnya when the Russian Army got Djokar Dudayev, defeated the Chechen separatist militia in fierce combined
arms warfare Angola and Chechnya are peaceful and prosperous now.
"It cannot end while Prabhakaran has not been demilitarised one way or another."
Claiming that Sri Lanka's "human rights record, our record of civilian casualties, compares favourably with that of the West in theatres where its
Armed Forces" operate, he said the West's use of human rights as an instrument was "most disturbing".
"The issue of Kosovo (and the de facto separate status of Iraqi Kurdistan) reveal that the West is not averse to the splintering of existing states and the
carving out of new ones."
Jayatilleka added: "The West does not seem to believe in a brotherhood of legitimate states which are besieged by terrorism. For the West, terrorism
is a problem only if the anti-state movement in question claims to be Islamic or Leftist."
In contrast, most Asian countries back Sri Lanka on the issue of human rights, he said, because "they are not possessed of colonial or neo-colonial
habits of centuries", because they believe in "non-interference in the internal affairs of others", and also because they "know what it is to experience the
threat of secession and terrorism".
Jayatilleka accused the University Teachers for Human Rights-Jaffna (UTHR-J), a respected rights group, of "becoming part of the West's civil
society pets".
"These elements just do not want the Sri Lankan state to win. They must comprehend that Tiger fascism cannot be defeated by unarmed Tamil
expatriate dissidents.
It can only be defeated by the guns, men and women of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and their Tamil partners." Last Updated ( Monday, 02 June 2008 )