LTTE Political Head writes to Norwegian facilitator

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 October 2006, 06:00 GMT]
The Political Head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, S.P. Thamilchelvan Friday sent an urgent letter to the Norwegian Special Envoy, Jon Hanssen-Bauer, informing the Norwegian facilitator on the LTTE stand following the Sri Lankan offensive in Vaharai. The LTTE decision to abide by the Co-Chairs call was a goodwill gesture, extended to the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL), the officials in Kilinochchi said alluding that the LTTE leadership's message was a reminder of the moral obligations bound with the call to cease the violence in creating a conducive environment for talks.

The letter was sent after the LTTE defence council discussed the military atmosphere prevailing in the Northern Front and in the East, Tiger officials said.

LTTE had ceased tactical and pre-emptive defence operations with certain assurances to the facilitator, the Tiger officials added.

There was a need for a serious reminder of the bound moral responsibilities, as the Sri Lankan forces were making use of the goodwill gesture to engage in offensive operations.

The content of the message was not made available to media by the Tigers.

However, the Tiger officials said Colombo's refusal to grant the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission's access the demarcated Forward Defence Line (FDL) positions where hostilities prevailed, had a military agenda not conducive to the "best interests" of a renewed negotiation process.

The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) in its latest ruling on offensive operations (22 July - 25 September) noted that the SLMM had "reasons to believe that alternative motives were behind the GoSL's decision to deny SLMM entry into Sampur."

The SLMM ruling, that blamed both the parties equally for the major CFA violations, reminded that "SLMM shall be given immediate access to areas where violations of the Agreement are alleged to have taken place."

The LTTE officials said that they extended full cooperation to the SLMM to access areas where hostilities had taken place following the call by the Co-Chairs and the strenghtened engagement of Norway as facilitator in bringing the parties to negotiations.