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Sri Lankan army raises ceasefire option: report
Agence France Presse - April 12, 2009
The Sri Lankan military may enact a short ceasefire in its offensive against Tamil rebels to allow thousands of trapped civilians to escape the fighting, a state-run newspaper said Sunday.
The United Nations and many countries around the world have called for non-combatants to be protected as government troops move to crush the Tamil Tiger guerrillas, who have been pushed to the brink of defeat.
Sri Lankan army chief Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka would agree to a "48-hour pause in firing if there is a guarantee that civilians will be allowed to move out of the no-fire zone freely," the Sunday Observer reported.
Both sides have been accused of attacks inside the small coastal area that the government has designated as a "no-fire zone."
The Tigers, who are accused of holding the civilians hostage, have suffered months of battlefield defeats that could finally end their decades-long armed campaign for an independent Tamil homeland.
The Observer reported that the remaining Tiger fighters had opened fresh talks with officials from Norway, which brokered an ineffectual peace deal in 2002.
It also said the US ambassador in Colombo, Robert Blake, had recently met with Fonseka and requested a week-long ceasefire, which was turned down.
The Tigers suffered another major setback last week when they lost at least 550 fighters during four days of fighting to defend a village which eventually fell to government forces, officials said.
Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was left with few senior comrades after the battle and may try to flee the island during any ceasefire, the Observer added.
The Sri Lankan government has repeatedly stressed it would not agree to any end to hostilities short of outright victory.
There was no immediate comment from the Tigers, but the pro-rebel Tamilnet website said the military had fired 300 shells into the "no-fire zone" in 45 minutes early on Sunday. "Heavy civilian casualties are feared," it said.
On Friday, the government announced that it had set up "rescue points" just outside the "no-fire zone" to help those civilians who had managed to flee the violence.
The UN, which calculated 2,800 non-combatants died in a two-month period earlier this year, fears thousands more could be killed or wounded.
About 100,000 demonstrators marched through London on Saturday to demand a truce, and similar protests were held in Scandinavia and Paris.
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