Sri Lanka: Foreign minister calls for talks to end `futile' 17-year war.
Published:
18 May 2000 y., Thursday
Ending a lull in their separatist fight, rebels in Sri Lanka resumed an assault on their former stronghold of Jaffna on Tuesday, while the island's government said it was time to talk peace. Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar acknowledged that Vellupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Tamil rebels, was fighting a ``good battle'' but said it was time to come to the peace table after 17 years of war.
The government's appeal for peace talks came less than a week after it had rejected a cease-fire to allow nearly 40,000 government soldiers to withdraw from the northern Jaffna Peninsula, which the rebels seek as part of a Tamil homeland. There was no comment on the government peace offer on the Tamil guerrillas' Web sites, but the latest update showed the rebels had resumed their attack on Jaffna after a three-day lull. The Web sites said the rebels had launched assaults on their former stronghold of Jaffna from two fronts and were within one mile of the city. Chief government information officer Ariya Rubasinghe said at least 40 rebels and six soldiers were killed in the clash that erupted late Monday and lasted nearly 12 hours. The fighting took place 2 1/2 miles southeast of the center of Jaffna, the base of Tamil culture and the largest city in the north, where most of the country's minority Tamils live. The Tamils claim they face discrimination from the Sinhalese majority, which controls the government and the military. The Tamil rebels are fighting for a separate homeland in northern Sri Lanka, an Indian Ocean nation off India formerly known as Ceylon. More than 62,000 people have been killed since fighting erupted in 1983.
Šaltinis:
Internet
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.
The most popular articles
About 22,000 non-citizens have not yet exchanged their former USSR passports.
more »
A group of Russian and international environmental organizations have sent a letter to the World Bank’s president James Wolfensohn.
more »
Polish Education Minister Miroslaw Handke faces not only a bad grade but losing his job as well as opposition lawmakers push for his ouster over a math’s mistake.
more »
The euthanasia is widely discussed subject in Lithuania as all over the World, but people barely know how it is performed in the country where this kind of practice has been done for more than 25 years: the Netherlands.
more »
U.S. investigators say they have stronger evidence than ever that American soldiers missing in action - including spy pilots shot down during the Cold War - were held in the Soviet ''gulag archipelago'' of prison camps.
more »
More than 30,000 Poles, including President Alexander Kwasniewski and Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, are to travel to Rome from July 6-8.
more »
Terrified villagers barricaded themselves in their homes as 200 Neo-Nazis chanted "Sieg Heil" and "Heil Hitler" at a weekend meeting in northern Poland which police did nothing to stop, a newspaper reported Monday.
more »
Nearly a fifth of Hungarian teenagers have been entrapped by the Internet, the Zeus Consulting and Publishing Company told MTI on Wednesday .
more »
Vilius Kavaliauskas,well-known Lithuanian political scientist, shares his view on interrelation of national minorities in Lithuania.
more »
The anti-Hungarian manifestations in Marosvasarhely (western Romania) after the second round of local elections are far from reflecting a tolerant European mentality.
more »