The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have shown no sign they are genuine about wanting peaceeven though the door remains open for a return to negotiations, a senior Sri Lankan official said Saturday. “We are looking for a negotiated end to this conflict... so far they have shown no inclination to enter into any constructive dialoguewith a view to ending this conflict,” Palitha Kohona, secretary with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told reporters on the side lines of a regional security summit.
01 June 2008: AFP
Singapore— The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have shown no sign they are genuine about wanting peaceeven though the door remains open for a return to negotiations, a senior Sri Lankan official said Saturday. “We are looking for a negotiated end to this conflict... so far they have shown no inclination to enter into any constructive dialoguewith a view to ending this conflict,” Palitha Kohona, secretary with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told reporters on the side lines of a regional security summit.
He said “the LTTE is free to come back to the negotiating table but... must do so genuinely with a commitment
tonegotiating a sustainable peace and for that it must also leave aside its weaponry.” Kohona’s comments at the Shangri-La Dialogue summit came as the rejected government plans to devolve more power to the island’s northand east, and said they killed 31 troops in the latest fighting, a pro-rebel website said.
There was no immediate comment from Sri Lanka’s defence ministry. The Colombo government is moving ahead to devolve more power to regions in the island’s north and east. But the LTTE, who have been fighting to carve out a homeland for minority Tamils inthose regions since 1972, have rejected Colombo’s devolution plans, Nadesan said.
The Tamil Tigers launched their armed struggle for a separate Tamil state in 1972, and the ensuing conflict has left tens of thousands of people dead in the Sinhalese majority island.Fighting has escalated sharply since Colombo pulled out of a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire in January. —AFP
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