SL President convenes meeting of top military brass

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 July 2005, 15:59 GMT]
Sri Lankan President Ms. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga convened a meeting of senior officers of all three armed forces in Colombo at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH) Tuesday, and spoke on the current political trends, sources in Colombo said.

Informed sources said that this was the first time Ms Kumaratunge has had a meeting of this nature with the top brass of the armed forces.

Ms Chandrika Kumaratunga is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces in Sri Lanka.

The implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement, P-TOMS and the future of the peace talks were discussed at the meeting.

The briefing session commenced Tuesday evening though it was scheduled for 2 p.m.

The meeting started in the afternoon and Baudaloka Mawatha, where BMICH is situated, was heavily guarded by the security forces, sources sai.

The press were invited but were not given access to cover the entire proceedings of the meeting, a journalist who attended the event said.

According to a SLBC news report, Ms Kumaratunga had stated that the P-TOMS has not conferred any powers relating military and security to the Liberation Tigers. P-TOMS is purely an administrative structure to rehabilitate and reconstruct tsunami hit coastal areas in the northeast, the report said.

Kumaratunga had further stated that P-TOMS has not violated Sri Lanka's territorial integrity and sovereignty. LTTE has still not commented adversely on the P-TOMS, SLBC reported.