Sri Lanka Vows to Destroy All Tiger Military Assets

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Sri Lanka Vows to Destroy All Tiger Military Assets

Sri Lanka vowed jan. 25 to attack and destroy Tamil Tiger military assets, including those in the northern stronghold they control under terms of a tattered 2002 truce, in what is seen as a recipe for years of more war.
Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, President Mahinda Rajapakse’s brother, told Reuters the only way the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam can defuse the military’s plan is if rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran personally shows he is genuine about talking peace.

The military and the Tigers are locked in a new chapter of a two-decade civil war that has killed more than 67,000 people since 1983. Troops are hunting down Tiger fighters in the island’s restive east after forcing them to abandon a key coastal stronghold there.

“We definitely want to destroy their assets, wherever those are — whether it is in the north, east, south. Military assets will be destroyed,” Rajapakse, who is not a minister but is the island’s top civil servant in charge of defense, said in a telephone interview.

“We want to destroy their assets everywhere, because as long as they have Sea Tiger bases, as long as they have artillery pieces … terrorists are always thinking wherever possible they want to do damage.”

The Tigers, who resumed their fight for an independent state in Sri Lanka’s north and east after the majority Sinhalese government ruled out their demands for a separate homeland for minority Tamils they call Tamil Eelam, were not immediately available for comment.

“Prabhakaran has not come out saying, ‘I’m ready for peace.’ No, he always says we want a separate Eelam — now that’s a joke,” Rajapakse said. “These people must be genuine.”

Asked what the Tigers could do to avoid a military drive to destroy all their assets, he said:

“Prabhakaran can talk, I suppose. The Norwegians [mediators] are there, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission [truce monitors] is there. They can tell them: ‘We are ready to genuinely discuss this problem’. He has to be genuine.”

The Tigers say they do not trust the government, who they blame for the failure of successive rounds of talks, and warn that they still retain their military capability in the east — and can operate using guerrilla jungle warfare tactics.

Nordic truce monitors say both sides are repeatedly violating the cease-fire agreement, which now holds only on paper, and both sides have ignored repeated calls from the international community to halt fighting, which is estimated to have killed over 4,000 troops, civilians and rebels in the past year.

However, Rajapakse insists that, despite aiming to wipe out all Tiger military assets, the government is committed to peace.

“The bottom line is the government is not going for a military solution. The government is genuinely committed for a political solution.” he said. “But the problem is you can’t have peace one-sided.”

“What we are doing actually started because the LTTE started going on the offensive,” he said. “What we are doing now is putting the pressure on them. So if they come to talks, that’s good.”

http://defensenews.com/story.php?F=2506736&C=navwar

[malaymishra123]

Good :thumbsup: