Conveys felicitations of President Rajapaksa to Hillary Clinton

Minister of Export Development and International Trade, Prof. G. L. Peiris, who is in Hong Kong conveyed to former President Bill Clinton the warm felicitations of President Rajapaksa on the nomination of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as United States Secretary of State.

 Mahaveera, Mumbai & the Madrasi Mad Max mode 

Though there was much tut-tutting by the so-called peace lobby in Colombo, President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga never spoke a truer word than when she described Velupillai Prabhakaran as a megalomaniac. The man is quite plainly mad, as evidenced by this claim early on in his Mahaveera speech this year: “…the sacrifices they made have no parallel in the history of the world. No country but ours had at any time encountered such wonderful dedication as expressed in the actions of our valiant heroes.” 

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in his discussions with Turkey’s President Abdul Gul in Ankara, emphasized the necessity to implement a global mechanism to eliminate terrorism. The two leaders also discussed trade between the two countries. A MoU on the exchange of prisoners between the two countries was signed, the Presidential Media Unit said yesterday.

 A spokesman for the unit told The Island that Rajapaksa had stressed the historical significance of the two countries and invited Turkey’s people to visit Sri Lanka to see its ancient cities.

The Chief Minister of the Eastern Province has approved plans for an inter-provincial sports and cultural festival to be held in Batticaloa.  This is the latest in a series of events being organised by the Peace Secretariat to promote interaction between young people from different communities and regions of the country under the Sports for Peace initiative. 

The festival will include cricket, football and volleyball competitions, as well as dance and musical shows. It will be held around the time of the Thai Pongal.

Sea Tigers lose another strategic location

MULLAITIVU: Troops engaged in the Wanni liberation operation yesterday achieved yet another victory with 59 Division troops capturing the strategically important Alampil area 10 Kilometres south of Mullaitivu whilst Task Force II troops captured the key junction town Puliyankulam north of Omanthai on the Jaffna Kandy A-9 highway, Military officials said yesterday.  

Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara confirmed to the Daily News that troops of the 59 Division reached the strategically important Alampil in the North of Nayaru lagoon and were in the process of consolidating their positions in an area where LTTE had their major Sea Tiger base.  

Colombo, Dec 02: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has assured Pope Benedict XVI that the famous 400-year-old Madhu Catholic Church, which suffered damages in the war with LTTE, has been restored to its original glory. 

The visiting Lankan President met the Pope in the Vatican City on Monday and appraised him about current developments in Sri Lanka. He said the church has been cleared of the Tamil Tiger rebels who had besieged it and restored, making it possible for the faithful to pray there.

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.