Lanka risks high intensity war, warn Tigers

Sri Lankan army soldiers patrol in Jaffna yesterday amid war fears. Sri Lanka itself braced for a decision by the European Union to ban the Tamil Tigers in a move the rebels say could scuttle future peace negotiations and push the island back to war. PHOTO: AFP

Col. Ramanan, one of the top Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) commanders in the eastern district of Batticaloa, was killed by sniper fire late on Sunday in what the rebels said was among the most serious violations of a 2002 truce.

The military denies any involvement, instead pointing the finger at a group of former Tigers led by a renegade commander called Col. Karuna, who split with the mainstream rebels in 2004. The Tigers accuse the army of helping the renegade faction.

"The Sri Lankan Army are waging war against the LTTE," S. Puleedevan, head of the Tigers' Peace Secretariat, told Reuters in a telephone interview from the northern rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi. "He was killed by the Sri Lankan army using sniper guns.

"The Tigers and Nordic truce monitors both now say Sri Lanka is locked in a "low intensity war", although the government disagrees and says it is only retaliating in limited bursts.

"The Sri Lankan army, by killing (our) senior members, are discarding the ceasefire agreement," Puleedevan added. "It is actually pushing a low intensity war towards high intensity war."

Sunday's attack came a month after the Sri Lankan military chief narrowly escaped assassination after a suspected Tiger suicide bomb attack on army headquarters in Colombo.

The ceasefire is still technically holding, but more than 270 troops and civilians have been killed since early April and the rebels and the military are fighting increasingly frequent skirmishes with mortars and rocket propelled grenades near their forward defence lines in the north and east.

The Tigers have pulled out of peace talks indefinitely, accusing the government of failing to honour a pledge to disarm armed groups -- particularly the Karuna faction -- who they regard as traitors and say are government-backed.

Puleedevan says it is highly unlikely talks, aimed at securing a permanent end to a two decade civil war that killed more than 64,000 people, will resume this year.

"The prospects are very bleak now," he said. "If this type of act continues, it's going to jeopardise the whole process."

The Tigers say an imminent European Union move to outlaw the group as a banned terrorist organisation, as the United States, Britain, Canada and India have already done, would only make things worse.

The ban, which diplomats say has been agreed by the 25-nation bloc in principle, is a diplomatic slap in the face for the Tigers, who have long sought to project themselves as viable leaders of a de facto state they want recognised as a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils.