SRI LANKA:Sri Lanka's government has decided to annul a six-year ceasefire agreement with the Tamil Tigers which would allow a full-scale military campaign to recapture the rebels' de facto state in the north of the island.
The truce has been dead on the ground since a new phase of a two-decade civil war opened in early 2006. The announcement yesterday came just hours after suspected Tiger rebels bombed a military bus in downtown Colombo, killing four people and wounding 24.
"The government has decided to withdraw from the ceasefire," said Lakshman Hulugalle, director general of the Media Centre for National Security.
"Today, at a cabinet meeting, it was decided now the government will give notice to the other party, because there is a clause that says we have to give 14 days' notice."
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who are fighting for an independent state in north and east Sri Lanka, were not immediately available for comment. Norway, which brokered the 2002 truce, also had no comment.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa said last month he might outlaw the rebels if they continued to mount large-scale attacks, because there was "a limit to our patience, our tolerance".
Sri Lanka's defence secretary, Mr Rajapaksa's brother Gotabaya, called on Saturday for an end to the ceasefire pact. He said it had been violated so many times it had become a sham.
Buoyed by battlefield successes in the east, the Rajapaksa brothers have vowed to defeat the rebels militarily.
Air force jets bombed a suspected rebel sea wing base and a logistics base in the island's north yesterday, which the military said killed two senior insurgents.
Reclusive rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran said in November he had no hope of a political settlement with the government after the chief of his political wing was killed in an air force bombing raid.
Analysts say there is no clear winner on the horizon and fear the war could grind on for years. More than 5,000 people have been killed since early 2006, taking the death toll since the war erupted in 1983 to about 70,000.
Norwegian mediators had hoped the fact that a Nordic truce-monitoring mission remained in place left a foundation on which to build future peace talks.
"The ceasefire agreement was dead on the ground but one of its institutions was functioning, the monitoring mission," said Jehan Perera, an analyst with non-partisan advocacy group the National Peace Council. "It was recording the violations of the ceasefire.
"What this withdrawal will mean is that future violations will not be monitored and recorded by an impartial body." - ( Reuters )