Special report: Ceasefire over in Sri
Lanka
COLOMBO, Nov. 27 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers
said Monday they will resume their struggle for independence for the Tamil
people abandoning six years of negotiations to end the conflict, but the
military has played down the threat.
The LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) leader
Velupillai Prabakaran delivering his so-called Hero's Day speech in the rebel
held north said "six years have passed since we dedicated ourselves to the
ethnic conflict through peace talks."
He said "the uncompromising stance of Sinhala
chauvinism has left us with no other option but an independent state for the
people of Tamil Eelam (separate Tamil homeland)."
The LTTE leader said that the majority Sinhala
leaders will never put forward a resolution to the Tamil national question.
Commenting on the February 2002 ceasefire backed by
the Norwegian facilitators the Tiger leader said it has now become defunct as
the new government "hopes to decide the fate of the Tamil nation using its
military power."
Sri Lanka's Media Center for National Security said
in a statement that the elusive leader's speech "changes but a little over the
years -- the same threats, the same lamentations."
Describing Prabakaran as "a man who had seriously
lost the plot", the statement also refuted his views on such issues as Tamil
homeland, humanitarian needs, political framework, peace talks and the LTTE's
"need to be recognized as a government."
In his 2005 speech, Prabakaran gave the government a
year to offer a "reasonable" political solution or face an "intensification" of
the struggle for self-determination.
The LTTE during six years of negotiations agreed to
probe a federal solution but the analysts note that the Tiger leader's policy
speech indicates that his outfit may abandon the process of negotiations.
The Norwegian effort began in 2000 saw the LTTE and
the government meeting face to face eight times for negotiations since2002.
The process became marred by high cost of violence
with the government saying that over 3000 people died in the conflict between
December 2005 and October 2006.
More than 60,000 have been killed in Indian Ocean
island since the LTTE launched its separatist campaign in the mid-1980s.
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