Sri Lanka president vows to counter any rebel attack

COLOMBO - Sri Lanka's military will continue to battle the island's Tamil Tigers if provoked, President Mahinda Rajapakse said today, amid fears sporadic fighting between the foes could derail peace talks due later this month.

Residents in the besieged army-held northern Jaffna peninsula heard barrages of artillery and multi-barrel rocket fire roar into the sky before dawn, but violence has subsided sharply since a major military offensive into rebel territory on Friday.

"(The president) emphasised that the government would be compelled to take appropriate counter-measures to ensure security if the LTTE were to continue with violent and provocative actions," Rajapakse's office said in a statement after he met ambassadors from the island's main donor nations -- the United States, Japan, the European Union and Norway.

Rajapakse's warning comes after the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) issued one of their own on Saturday, after the armed forces pushed 5km across their forward defence lines in the eastern district of Batticaloa before retreating.

Rebel political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan wrote a letter to mediator Norway's special peace envoy saying that the Tigers might pull out of talks planned in Geneva on Oct 28-29 if the military continued to attack.

The military justified Friday's offensive -- in which it says it killed dozens of rebels -- by saying the Tigers had attacked their frontline positions in Batticaloa and in Jaffna.

That operation came just weeks after the military captured rebel territory on the southern lip of the strategic northeastern harbour of Trincomalee. That offensive outraged the international community although the military described it too as defensive.

Emboldened by a series of conventional warfare successes, some military officers say they are keen to inflict as many casualties on the rebels as possible before any talks, and some analysts fear talks may be premature.

"They are gambling on the LTTE being unwilling to resort to terrorist measures because of their own self-image as a state in formation and their desire for international recognition," said Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council, a non-partisan peace advisory group.

"It is a very risky gamble."

However analysts are heartened by a new collaboration pact between Rajapakse's minority government and the main opposition United National Party (UNP), seen as a big step towards forging consensus among majority Sinhalese south on how to end the war.

Government and Tigers accuse each other of trying to force a return to a two-decade conflict that has killed more than 65,000 people since 1983.

Hundreds of civilians, troops and rebels have been killed since late July, the worst violence since a 2002 ceasefire that lies in tatters. Some diplomats and analysts suspect the Tigers have agreed to talks to buy time to regroup.

- REUTERS