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Stumped, Lanka rejects India’s truce suggestion
Colombo shot down India’s unexpected suggestion to accept the ceasefire offer made by the Tamil Tigers last week, saying the rebels would have to lay down arms for hostilities to cease. Sutirtho Patranobis reports.
Colombo on Sunday shot down India’s unexpected suggestion to accept the ceasefire offer made by the Tamil Tigers last week, saying the rebels would have to lay down arms for hostilities to cease.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), according to the military, was confined to 58 sq km in Mullaitivu. Cornered, it had offered a ceasefire last Monday, but added they wouldn’t surrender.
Visiting the port city of Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu on Saturday, India’s External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said: “It is reported that the LTTE has offered a ceasefire... it is our view that the government of Sri Lanka should seize the opportunity presented by the offer...’’
A month ago, the minister held a different view. “I stressed that military victories offer a political opportunity to restore life to normalcy in the northern province and throughout Sri Lanka,’’ Mukherjee said after meeting Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on January 28.
India’s wavering stand left diplomats and politicians puzzled. It is learnt that India neither formally nor informally communicated the change to the Lankan government.
“Maybe the change was dictated by domestic pressures. We know that the general election in India is looming,’’ said a diplomat, who didn’t wish to be named. The LTTE, he said, should show some “credibility and decency by first laying down arms’’
Foreign secretary Palitha Kohona told HT, “Our position is clear. As soon as the LTTE lays down arms, the ceasefire will be automatic.”
‘Pak needs to do more’
Pakistan must dismantle terror infrastructure to prevent a repeat of a Mumbai-type strikes, Pranab Mukherjee said in Kolkata on Sunday.
Addressing an international conference on “Cooperative Development, Peace and Security in South and Central Asia”, Mukherjee described as a positive first step Pakistan accepting the involvement of some of its citizens in the Mumbai strikes. At the same time, they need to do more, he said. The perpetrators of 26/11 should be brought to justice and Pakistan must dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism to prevent recurrence of such attacks.
India had consciously decided not to discontinue people-to-people contact as well as road and rail links, and had kept open the channels of communication with the neighbouring country, he said.
