Non-Subscriber Extract
Sri Lanka vows to crack down on Tamil Tigers
By Iqbal Athas
08 January 2008
The Sri Lankan government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has vowed to step up its military campaign against Tamil Tiger rebels in 2008 after formally abandoning a six-year ceasefire agreement (CFA).
The ceasefire agreement, signed in February 2002, was intended as an essential step towards finding "a negotiated political solution to the ongoing ethnic conflict". However, with the government delivering the two-week termination notice provided for in the CFA to the Norwegian government, which has been acting as mediator, the ceasefire officially expires on 16 January.
The ceasefire had already effectively ended on the ground following the escalation of hostilities since Rajapaksa's victory in the November 2005 presidential elections. In March 2007, the rebels staged a dramatic demonstration of their air-strike capability by using Czech-built Zlin Z-143 aircraft to attack the country's largest air force base at Katunayake. Another attack on the airbase at Anuradhapura, a staging area for the Northern theatre of military operations, damaged or destroyed more than USD30 million worth of assets.
The security forces had their own successes in 2007, recapturing almost all of Sri Lanka's Eastern Province, including large areas of rebel-dominated territory south of the strategic eastern port city of Trincomalee: the lifeline for some 40,000 government troops deployed in the northern Jaffna peninsula. It is from this port that all supplies and troops are ferried to the northern capital. Only a small number are moved in ageing, Russian-built An-32 transports.
Image: Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, centre, poses with the Tigers who participated in the attack on a Sri Lankan air force base in Anuradhapura.