Mar 31, Colombo: Sri Lanka today rejected the LTTE’s latest offer for a ceasefire call saying that the government will not go for any ceasefire with the rebels under any circumstances and the war is to be finished soon.
“We will not cave into pressures from any international quarters locally and internationally and will not stop until the war was completely over,” President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said.
Newly appointed international spokesman LTTE, S. Pathmanathan was quoted by the pro-rebel TamilNet Web site as saying that the international community needed “to apply adequate pressure on the government to enter into a ceasefire with the Tigers.”
However, speaking at a press conference in Colombo top government official Rajiva Wijesinha said the Tigers are not reliable.
“We know that making a sort of agreement with the Tigers is not something we can rely on,” he said.
He said as military forces are now very close to the civilians and the front lines are within their sight, the tens of thousands of people trapped in the war zone have a greater chance of coming to the cleared areas.
The LTTE is known to renege on their ceasefire calls and defence observers say Tigers use ceasefire periods to regroup and rearm themselves.
Tigers are now boxed into a 21 sq km area including the no-fire zone where nearly 100,000 civilians are trapped. Sri Lankan troops have surrounded the area from all sides and the Sri Lankan Navy is guarding from the northeastern sea.
Western governments and humanitarian agencies have called for a temporary ceasefire period to allow the civilians to move into the government controlled areas. However, there is no guarantee from the LTTE that the civilians will be allowed to escape the war zone. The LTTE ignored a government declared 48-hour truce period to allow the civilians to evacuate in January.
However Sri Lanka’s Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona recently has said that the government may temporarily halt the military offensive to evacuate civilians.
source: colombopage.com