COLOMBO: Condemning the deadly terror strike in Mumbai, Sri Lankan foreign minister Rohitha Bogollagama on Friday said militant groups such as LTTE provide ideas and methodology for undertaking such attacks.  

By Jamila Najmuddin

Investigations were directed at finding whether the LTTE was in any way involved in the terrorist attack on Mumbai, the commercial hub of India, but with evidence pointing towards Pakistan based militants any LTTE involvement was ruled out, a high ranking Indian official said.

"Pakistan told Indian officials to look into all aspects, including an LTTE or Al-Qaeda connection. Pakistan also informed India that some of the terrorists appeared to be South Indians and looked like LTTE cadres. India investigated every angle," the official said.

Rohan Mathes

Italy: President Mahinda Rajapaksa is to meet Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican today during a brief visit to Italy.

President Rajapaksa arrived in the Italian capital, Rome, yesterday accompanied by First Lady Shiranthi Rajapaksa, Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga and Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama. This is the President’s second visit to Italy this year since he attended the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization’s food summit in Rome in June.

COLOMBO (AFP) – A pledge by Sri Lanka's Tamil rebel leader to fight on despite a military onslaught raised fears Friday of a return to a hit-and-run guerrilla war as his mini-state faced potential collapse. 

Separatist chief Velupillai Prabhakaran vowed Thursday the rebels would "continue with our struggle until the alien Sinhala occupation of our land is evicted," referring to Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese population, and appealed to Tamils abroad for support to shore up his military machine. 

Government forces have surrounded Prabhakaran in his political capital of Kilinochchi in the biggest-ever military campaign in the history of Sri Lanka's armed separatist struggle, which dates back to 1972.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Sri Lankan soldiers have recaptured a key northern town near the headquarters of Tamil Tiger rebels 18 years after the area was seized by the insurgents, the military said Monday.

Troops seized Kokavil town, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of the insurgents' de facto capital of Kilinochchi, on Sunday, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said. He did not give casualty details.

The capture was the latest sign of the government's current dominance in the island's decades-old civil war. The rebels have been forced to abandon vast areas of land and retreat to territory in the northeast during months of heavy battles.

COLOMBO: Seventy lorry loads of food items received from India for civilians held virtually hostage by the LTTE will leave Vavuniya today, the Ministry of Resettlement and Disaster Relief Services said.

This is in addition to a convoy of 20 lorries carrying flour, sugar, dhal and kerosene which left for Kilinochchi from Vavuniya on Friday.  

Meanwhile, 183 civilians reached Vavuniya escaping from the uncleared areas last Friday increasing the total number of escapees to 322.

The displaced are staying at the Menic Farm Welfare Centre in Vavuniya.

Courtesy: Daily News

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has condemned the Mumbai terrorist attacks in which gunmen struck 10 sites Wednesday night across India's financial hub, killing scores of people and taking hostages in two luxury hotels. President Rajapaksa’s statement condemning the attack is given below in full:

The Associated Press 

Colombo, Sri Lanka: Sri Lankan air force helicopters on Sunday bombed Tamil Tiger rebels who were trying to block troops from capturing their de facto capital, the government said. Three rebels were killed in separate ground battles. 

The Defense Ministry said in a statement that the helicopters attacked rebel positions in Murikandy village, south of the rebel headquarters, Kilinochchi. It did not give casualty details.

Special Correspondent  

CHENNAI: Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy on Friday said the message of LTTE leader Prabakaran pleading with India to lift the ban on the organisation and help Tamils get their homeland was ridiculous and laughable. 

Dr. Swamy said the LTTE chief was a proclaimed offender and if he wanted to repent for ordering the killing of Rajiv Gandhi, he must surrender to India at a mutually agreed location and face trial in Indian courts.

The Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka successfully participated at the recently held UN Women's Guild Bazaar, which brought together national and restaurant stalls from around 70 Permanent Missions in Geneva.

Under the leadership of Mrs. Jayatilleka as head of the Permanent Mission’s Seva Vanitha Unit, the Mission organized a national stall and a restaurant stall, both of which were very popular with visitors to the Bazaar.

The national stall of Sri Lanka offered Sri Lankan tea and tea gift items, wooden educational toys and soft toys.  As always, Sri Lanka tea proved to be the most popular item, with the 'Five Fine Teas' item comprising of the five regional teas of Sri Lanka and the 'Connoisseur' pack of tea bags from the Sri Lanka Tea Board, and the Earl Grey and Loolecondera tea in decorative tins from Mlesna, being sold within the first few hours of the Bazaar.  Many visitors who arrived later in the day and who came specifically to the Sri Lanka stall for tea were disappointed to discover that their favourite tea was sold out. However, many of those customers also showed an interest in the new items the stall offered this year from Mlesna, such as the wide variety of herbal and flavoured teas, and the ceramic tea items in the form of painted elephants, tea pots and mugs, all of which came with small packets of fine quality tea.

COLOMBO: Condemning the deadly terror strike in Mumbai, Sri Lankan foreign minister Rohitha Bogollagama on Friday said militant groups such as LTTE provide ideas and methodology for undertaking such attacks.

The characterisation of LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabakaran’s 2008 message as ‘Great Heroes Day’ speech is full of irony. The 3,283-word statement was made public on the evening of November 27, twenty hours after the start of the horrific fidayeen terror in Mumbai. In stark contrast to the response of the rest of the world, the ‘Great Heroes Day’ speech makes no reference to the Pakistan-origin terrorist strike at India’s financial capital.

The apologists of the LTTE might attribute the omission to the possibility that the speech was recorded well before it was broadcast. But how to explain the LTTE’s subsequent silence on Mumbai? The only credible explanation is that any comment on this subject would invite unwelcome comparisons, in Sri Lanka, in India, and elsewhere, given that the LTTE’s own terrorist track record that goes back to the early 1980s, has involved every conceivable atrocity against civil society and common humanity, and even spilt over into India to claim the life of a former Prime Minister. In essence, Prabakaran’s 2008 speech is a mercy plea to India to bail out Tiger forces on the run from a successful campaign by the Sri Lankan armed forces.

Commemoration of Tamil 'martyrs' linked with support for Tigers

By Jerome Taylor

Thousands of British Tamils will descend upon a major festival in London today despite accusations that it is a fundraising initiative for the Tamil Tigers, a banned terrorist group.

Opponents of the event say it provides money for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and has celebrated suicide missions carried out by the group's feared Black Tiger regiment. They believe the festival is illegal under Britain's anti-terrorism laws which prohibit fundraising for proscribed organisations, such as the Tigers, or glorifying their actions.

Amnesty International released yet another one of its highly imaginative press statements on the humanitarian situation in this country last week. Without setting foot here, it latched onto a few unsubstantiated remarks by an ex-aid worker, did a little bad arithmetic with a random collection of very misleading figures and ended up in some ridiculous conclusions.

The Government is not by any means restricting the supply of food to the Vanni. On the contrary, officials have been working incredibly hard to ensure that the basic necessities get through and in plenty of time.

Tamil Tiger rebels are retreating from Kilinochchi, their political headquarters in northern Sri Lanka, a senior official has said.

Keheliya Rambukwella, a defence spokesman, said on Wednesday that government troops were on "the outskirts" of Kilinochchi after days of fierce fighting.

He said the rebels "appeared to have abandoned their defences".

The battle for Kilinochchi started in early September. 

Fighting has intensified in the past two weeks since the army seized the entire western coast from the rebels for the first time since 1993.

"They are in retreat, they are moving out," said Rambukwella, who is also a government minister. "Their presence is not felt."

MUMBAI, India – A trickle of bodies and hostages emerged from a luxury hotel Thursday as Indian commandoes tried to free people trapped by suspected Muslim militants who attacked at least 10 targets in India's financial capital of Mumbai, killing 101 people. 

More than 300 were also wounded in the highly coordinated attacks Wednesday night by bands of gunmen who invaded two five star hotels, a popular restaurant, a crowded train station, a Jewish center and at least five other sites, armed with assault rifles, hand grenades and explosives.

 A previously unknown Islamic militant group claimed responsibility for the carnage, the latest in a series of nationwide terror attacks over the past three years that have dented India's image as an industrious nation galloping toward prosperity.

Some people really seem to delight in recounting our problems. Instead of appreciating progress, they bash us over the head with still to be obtained goals. And at considerable length. The situation is never improving in their eyes. We are either already bad or getting a lot worse, and no practical suggestions are offered to help us recover. Rhetorical flourishes are the only things we are given by these characters. They love nothing better than wallowing in a bit of good old misery. 

Human Rights Watch demonstrates this syndrome perfectly in its latest press release on the situation in the Eastern Province. To summarise, life is bad and blame lies with the Government.

B. Muralidhar Reddy

Douglas Devananda, Social Welfare Minister in the Mahinda Rajapaksa government and leader of the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP), has clear views on the current military and political situation in Sri Lanka and the humanitarian crisis triggered by the ongoing war between the Sri Lankan Army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Here are excerpts from an interview he gave The Hindu.

For years after the JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera unleashed a Molotov-style cocktail revolution in 1971 in a futile attempt to grab power but was thwarted under the leadership of Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Felix Reginald Dias Bandaranaike, and the subsequent political developments in Sri Lanka, which showed some ascendancy of the political power of the JVP, mainly due to its campaign they carried out against the Tamil political groups including Thondaman and then the LTTE, the people of Sri Lanka had always believed that the arch enemy of the LTTE was not the Government but the JVP.