By IPS Correspondents
COLOMBO, Jan 16 2008 (IPS)

By withdrawing from the Norwegian-brokered ceasefire, signed in 2002 with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lankan government is only ‘’legalising existing ground reality,’’ a government spokesman says.

&#39&#39The LTTE has violated the ceasefire agreement so many times and what we have done is basically legalise the existing ground situation,’’ Lakshman Hullugalle, director-general of the Media Centre for National Security, told IPS in an interview.

Hullugalle’s assertion was in consonance with a statement made by the Sri Lankan mission to the United Nations in Geneva on Tuesday that the CFA ‘’ended quite some time ago when the LTTE unilaterally returned to full-scale hostilities in December 2005.&#39&#39

Since the ceasefire agreement (CFA) was signed, the LTTE (also known as Tamil Tigers) has violated it 3,944 times, according to the records of the all-Scandinavian Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), which also holds that the government has violated it 359 times.

Most of the violations occurred after President Mahinda Rajapakse won office in November 2005 on a strong pro-Sinhalese, nationalist platform that has favoured a military solution to the long-festering ethnic conflcit in the island nation, that has pitted minority Tamils against the Sinhalese majority.

The LTTE’s immediate response to Rajapakse’s election was a series of bomb attacks on government forces in the north and the east of the country, killing some 400 personnel within the first two months of the new administration. The armed forces responded four months later by lifting an LTTE blockade of water supplies to mainly Sinhalese and Muslim farmers in the east of the island.

The eviction of the LTTE from the east of the island, and the more recent targeted killing of two leading Tamil rebel figures, have convinced people that the country is close to being rid of the LTTE. According to the government, LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was himself injured in an air raid in November.

The peace movement, which consists mainly of foreign funded non-government organisations (NGOs), has not been visible on the streets to protest against the withdrawal of the CFA, perhaps sensing that the public mood is overwhelmingly against them.

Government sources, its Sinhala nationalist allies and even many people’s’organisations have branded he rights NGOs as traitors and ‘dollar-chasing peace vendors.’ International aid donors have expressed concern at the final demise of the CFA which provided a five-year window of relative peace and prosperity in an ethnic conflict that goes back 25 years and has resulted in the deaths of 70,000 people.

As SLMM members pack their bags to leave, the air force, navy and the army have mounted a major offensive to retake the LTTE stronghold of Wanni in the north of the country, which was recognised as LTTE territory in the CFA.

Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway, that are members of the SLMM, responded to the government withdrawal from the CFA by warning that any hope of returnig to the negotiation table would now be difficult.

With the armed forces’ morale high, army commander Sarath Fonseka, who survived an LTTE attempt to assassinate him in April 2006, has told journalists that he hopes to finish off the LTTE before he retires at the end of the year.

The LTTE has already been designated a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union and by neighbouring India.

Late Wednesday, the LTTE marked the end of the CFA with a bomb attack on a civilian bus in a rural area of Sri Lanka which killed some 24 people, including a number of school children. The government also accuses the LTTE of being behind the assassination of a minister on Jan. 8, a week after Colombo first announced intention to withdraw from the CFA.

LTTE’s bombing attacks in Combo and in the interior of the country are said to be designed to provoke a Sinhalese backlash against the Tamil population and Rajapakse has warned people to be vigilant against reacting.

Hullugalle argues that the armed forces are capable of defeating the LTTE, but recent Supreme Court (SC) rulings have restricted government’s ability to secure Colombo and other areas from terror attacks. He was referring to rulings by the SC, in response to petitions filed on human rights grounds, that permanent check points, house searches and the rounding up of suspected Tamil youth were unconstitutional.

‘’I think people in Colombo in particular want that type of security. People have asked for it, but we have to obey court decisions,’’ Hullugalle said. ‘’Human rights campaigners, both local and international, are not talking about the human rights of innocent people who need to be protected from the terrorism of the LTTE.’’

One organisation that is being singled out for criticism by officials is the National Peace Council (NPC) which is mainly funded by foreign donors.

Writing in the ‘Daily Mirror’ this week, NPC executive director Jehan Perera described the government’s decision to abrogate the CFA as ‘precipitous,’ and warned that the ethnic nationalism, needed to prosecute the war against the LTTE to a finish, did not fit well with the political accommodation and trust building necessary to generate an acceptable political solution to the conflict.

The new head of LTTE’s political wing B. Nadesan also reflected similar views in an interview with the ‘Sunday Times,’ when he argued that the CFA was a foundation for a peace agreement because it was worked out with massive support from the international community.

But Bandula Jayasekare, managing editor of the independent news weekly ‘Colombo Post,’ argues that the CFA had been confined to a piece of paper by the LTTE long before the government decided to abrogate it.

‘’The LTTE never respected it (the CFA),’’ he told IPS. ‘’If they did they wouldn’t have killed all those innocent civilians, many of them Tamils, such as the foreign minister Laksman Kadirgamar in 2006.’’

‘’The CFA did nothing for the people of this country, though it was reported that the agreement saved many lives, ‘’added Jayasekare. ‘’The LTTE started to develop its air wing under CFA and nothing was done either by the United Nations, or the so-called international community – mainly the U.S., Canada, Norway or others – to help Sri Lanka.’’

One of Rajapakse’s nationalist allies, the Marxist People’s Liberation Front leader Somawansa Amerasinghe strongly believes that the LTTE has proved to be a major impediment to peace in the country.

‘’Once the LTTE is finished, the military should come out of the north and east. Free speech must be restored among Tamils there,’’ he said in an interview with an Indian news channel this month. ‘’Once free speech is restored in the northeast, we can discuss constitutional matters with Tamils,’’ he was quoted as saying.

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