Ankara (Asiantribune.com): Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa arrived in Ankara late on Monday on an official visit at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gül. 

President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Shiranthi Rajapaksa were received by Kemal Onal, Governor of Ankara at Ankara Esenboga International Airport when he arrived yesterday (1December) evening from Rome. 

The last few weeks have seen a great burst of criticism of the Sri Lankan government, orchestrated by the LTTE and its surrogates in East and West, led in the West by the usual suspects. The main thrust of this criticism is to hold the Government back in the current offensive it is conducting against the LTTE.

Human Rights Watch attacks government in the East 

What amounts to the Western auxiliary force of the LTTE launched a two pronged attack in the last couple of weeks. Human Rights Watch, which is notorious for raising issues about its favoured victims whenever it needs to draw attention away from the abuses of those by whose largesse it lives, concentrated this time on the East. In doing so, it gave the game away completely, for it managed to deal with problems without once suggesting that the LTTE might be responsible for some of them.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) chief Prabhakaran's usually much hyped Great Heroes’ Day 2008 speech on November 27 became a casualty of the daring terror strike on the same day in Mumbai. Holding the city to ransom for three days the terror story hogged headlines and only few of the Indian print media carried Prabhakaran's speech on the sidelines, while the visual media ignored it.

And this time he needed the ears of New Delhi, more than Tamil Nadu, to act upon his strong plea for India's support for his armed struggle and lifting the Indian ban on the LTTE. Actually this was the central theme of his, otherwise recycled, annual speech. 

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: Human suffering and miseries being witnessed in the war in Sri Lanka should not be used as a pretext to call for a ceasefire, since they are part of the LTTE’s strategies, said Arular Arudpragasam, the chairman of the Eelam Revolutionary Organisers (EROS) and Eelavar Democratic Front (EDF). 

“The LTTE is duty-bound to face the Sri Lankan Army. The war cannot be stopped without fulfilling the objectives that actually led to it,” he told reporters on Wednesday. The London based Mr. Arudpragasam, now in Chennai, said LTTE leader Prabakaran had agreed to a ceasefire under pressure from India.

Courtesy: Hindu

Colombo: Sri Lanka has expressed its willingness to initiate a railway link with neighbouring India via the north-western coastal Mannar Island, which is located a few nautical miles away from India's pilgrim town of Rameshwaram.  

Transport Minister Dulles Alahapperuma has told Parliament that although there was a "quantitative growth" in all modes of transportation, such increase had not taken place in a uniform manner.  

"We have a dream of constructing a railway corridor from Sri Lanka to India via Mannar…. We may not be able to realise it during our regime but we hope to initiate the project," Minister Alahapperuma said during the budget debate in Parliament Tuesday.

by Zacki Jabbar

in New Delhi

A Sri Lankan architecture student, who won first prize in Holcims Sustainable Construction "Next Generation’ Europe competition in Madrid was commended during last week’s awards ceremony for the Asia Pacific Region, in New Delhi.

Semini Samarasinghe, from Kandy, who studies architecture in the United Kingdom, was invited by the Holcim Foundation to participate in the New Delhi ceremony. Her achievement was mentioned just before the Asia Pacific winners were announced.

Colombo, Sri Lanka: Sri Lankan air force jets bombed two ethnic Tamil rebel positions Wednesday, a day after troops killed three insurgents in separate clashes as they continued their campaign to capture two main rebel strongholds, the military said. 

Fighter jets targeted the rebels at two locations where they had been resisting government troops trying to advance into their de facto capital of Kilinochchi, the military said in a statement. It did not give casualty details.

The Associated Press 

Colombo, Sri Lanka: Sri Lankan soldiers seized a rebel-held village, destroyed four guerrilla bunkers and captured another in separate clashes in the island's northeast, the military said Tuesday. 

The rebels holding Periyakulam village in Mullaitivu district initially resisted but eventually fled under the attack by Sri Lankan forces, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said. 

Casualty details were not immediately available, Nanayakkara said.

 A day earlier, on Monday, troops attacked and destroyed four bunkers and captured a fifth in Mullaitivu district, the military said in statement.

Nanayakkara said there were no military casualties but that eight rebels were wounded in the bunker attacks.

New Delhi (IANS) The distribution of nearly 1,700 tonnes of food and other relief material sent by India for civilians caught up in Sri Lanka’s war zone is set to begin despite heavy rains. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is coordinating with Sri Lankan authorities as it reaches out to 40,000 distressed families each in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts, areas in the north the Tamil Tigers control. 

The first of the trucks carrying the goods moved into the rebel zone Monday, and the distribution is to start “any time now”, Paul Castella, head of the ICRC mission in Sri Lanka, said over telephone.

 “It will be happening tomorrow, day after, even today,” Castella, 45, told IANS. He said both Colombo and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were being kept informed.

Paul Harris

South China Morning Post

It is heartening to read that the Sri Lankan army has recaptured much of the territory in northern Sri Lanka held for many years by Velupillai Prabhakaran's Tamil Tigers. A decisive victory by Sri Lankan government forces would at last bring peace and a return of prosperity to the war-torn country, and might also offer the prospect of justice for one of the world's most ruthless terrorist masterminds.  

Few people remember that, from the 1930s to the 1980s, Sri Lanka was recognised as a leading Asian country, both in terms of economic growth and educational levels. It was identified in the 1980s as an "Asian tiger" which seemed to have the potential for the same sort of growth that has transformed Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong.

What went wrong is much disputed, but there is little doubt that the government of president Junius Jayawardene in the 1980s bears a heavy responsibility for deliberately increasing majority Sinhalese discrimination against Tamils as a political tool. Equally, irresponsible social attitudes on the part of the Sri Lankan ruling class led successive governments to neglect the plight of the poorest, leading to increasing desperation, in turn feeding the rise of extremism. 

Bi-lateral trade volume to reach $100 million by end 2008 

The Turkish President yesterday welcomed Turkish-Sri Lankan cooperation against terrorism. 

Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul said that Turkey welcomed the cooperation of the two countries in the fight against terrorism. 

“Turkey is pleased with the cooperation of Turkey and Sri Lanka, two countries that have suffered much from terrorism, in the international fight against terrorism,” Gul told a joint press conference with President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the Turkish capital of Ankara.

P K Balachandran

COLOMBO: The Catholic Bishop of Jaffna, Rev Thomas Savundaranayagam, wants India to pressurise the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to release the lakhs of Tamil civilians who are held captive in the north Sri Lankan war zones of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu. 

Rev Savundaranayagam, whose diocese extends to areas in the current war zone in the Wanni region, told Express here, that he had asked Members of Parliament belonging to the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to ask the Indian government to put pressure on the LTTE to release the civilians it had been holding captive for military purposes. 

Rev Savundaranayagam said that in the districts of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu, apart from the local population, there are 250,000 refugees from the western parts of the Wanni who had been driven out of their homes and hearths by the government’s military operations since 2006.

It ain't Over Till the Fat Laddie Swings

By: Dayan Jayatilleka

It ain’t over till it’s over, or as the Americans put it, in a reference to the opera, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. The Mahaveera Day 2008 speech by Velupillai Prabhakaran, one of the world’s most notorious and certainly tubbiest terrorist leaders, demonstrates that there can be no solution to Sri Lanka’s conflict so long as he remains alive and active, and has not been brought to justice. In our case it ain’t over till the fat laddie swings.

 In the first place the man is an outrageously unrepentant liar and assumes that everyone suffers from amnesia. In his speech he says that "It may be noted that during the long history of our struggle, we have not conducted any act of aggression against any member state of the international community". Let us forget for a moment that Sri Lanka is a member state of the international community, a fact that is proved by his complaint in the same speech, of the military and diplomatic assistance that Sri Lanka has obtained from members of the international community on precisely that basis. The man obviously believes that the assassination by suicide bomber of India’s former Prime Minister and (at the time) leader of the Opposition, Shri Rajiv Gandhi, former chairperson of SAARC, son of legendary former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and grandson of the iconic first Prime Minister of independent India, Shri Nehru, is not "an act of aggression against any member of the international community"!

Source: Reuters

By Shihar Aneez

COLOMBO (Reuters) - A trade scheme that boosted Sri Lanka's top export, garments, will remain in place while the European bloc completes a human rights probe that could lead to withdrawal of concessionary terms, Sri Lanka said on Tuesday.

The European bloc since July has repeatedly warned it may not renew the scheme at the end of the year because of human rights abuses stemming from Sri Lanka's civil war with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).  

"We will enjoy the facility until the investigation is over," S. Ranugge, secretary at the ministry of export development and international trade, told Reuters.   

However, he said the government would not cooperate with investigators if the European bloc sends them to Sri Lanka.

(December 01, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Kokavil, a major LTTE stronghold along the A-9 highway, has been captured by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA)’s 57 division. Fighting has been going on in this area for quite some time with both 57 division (north of Kokavil) and Task Force 3 (south of Kokavil) been engaged in frequent fire fights with LTTE cadres. 57 division units, who moved southward from their positions south of Kilinochchi yesterday, were able to take control of Kokavil area by today morning. Kokavil town and the area where a former Rupavahini transmission tower is located, is now under SLA control.

CHENNAI: To Chandra Schafter — who has selected Sri Lankan cricket squads, taken teams from the island to India and England as manager, and been involved in the administration, particularly with the Tamil Union Cricket and Athletic Club in Colombo — the mix of sport and violence is all too familiar.

“Sport, as it is now, is so important that if you want to create chaos it’s ideal,” he told The Hindu when he was in the city recently.

 “Terrorists want an audience as well, and sport unfortunately is caught in the trap. It’s very difficult for international cricketers to willingly play in such times. But in many ways, cricket has done us in Sri Lanka a lot of good in troubled times — it’s one thing that has brought the country together.”

As India picks up the pieces of the Mumbai carnage there is bound to be much soul searching and recrimination on what went wrong by the authorities. 

Already the blame game is on and security loopholes are being put under the microscope by analysts and commentators. Heads are also poised to roll.  

The Home Affairs Minister and the national security advisor have opted to resign.

 As Sri Lankans who felt the shock and pangs of the tragedy more closely than most we can only wish that our friendly neighbour recover from the ashes and emerge stronger and sturdier by its harrowing experience to be well equipped and prepared to face challenges of the evil forces.

Families of dead LTTE cadres and of those who are currently in the outfit staged a massive protest against the LTTE leadership in Wanni last morning (Dec 1), a defnce.lk source in Wanni revealed.  

According to the source, over 80 members of Mahaweera and Porali families participated in the protest held around 11 AM at the Oddusudan junction.  

"The protesters had arrived from Mullaittivu, Puthukuduirruppu and Vishwamadhu areas, and they wanted to move into the government controlled areas."  

The sources further said that the LTTE cadres at gun point prohibited the group of civilians moving beyond the Oddusuddan junction.