Sri Lanka returns to war as Tamil Tigers refuse talks

The government claimed 200 Tigers and 27 of its troops were killed on Saturday alone. Picture / Reuters

Sri Lanka appeared to be returning to civil war yesterday as the worst fighting in four years raged in the north, and the Tamil Tiger rebels ruled out peace talks.

The weekend has seen intense fighting around the Jaffna peninsula, scene of some of the heaviest battles of the civil war.

There were reports of serious casualties in the latest fighting.

The government claimed 200 Tigers and 27 of its own forces were killed on Saturday alone.

Although the wide discrepancy in the government's figures cast some doubt on them, the silence from the Tigers, who have not commented on casualties, suggests they may have suffered heavy losses.

The government's decision to launch a limited ground offensive on Tiger positions near Trincomalee two weeks ago looks increasingly to have opened Pandora's Box on Sri Lanka.

The fighting has spread dramatically.

It is now concentrated around the Elephant Pass, the narrow causeway that links the Jaffna peninsula to the rest of the island.

Jaffna is home to the largest Tamil community in Sri Lanka.

Control of it is seen as vital both to the Tigers, who want to create an independent homeland for the Tamils, and to the government who want to keep Sri Lanka united.

The Elephant Pass witnessed several bloody battles as the peninsula changed hands repeatedly during the civil war, and the weekend's fighting will have raised fears of a return to those times.

The costs of the fighting for the civilian population have been severe.

Exact figures are disputed, but hundreds are now feared to have been killed, among them 17 aid workers for the French NGO Action Contre la Faim who were murdered in the town of Muttur.

At least 50,000 people have had to flee their homes in the area around Trincomalee alone, according to the UNHCR, and many more were fleeing from the scene of the new fighting yesterday.

It was the government that began the recent fighting with a ground offensive near Trincomalee, but it appears it was the Tigers who spread the fighting to the Jaffna area, by launching a sudden and unexpected attack on government positions.

The government said it was prepared to hold peace talks yesterday, but the Tigers dismissed the idea.

Even more ominously, they said the 2002 ceasefire, which is technically still in force, and which both sides earlier claimed they were still committed to, was no longer possible to maintain.

"The Sri Lankan government's offensive attacks make peace talks and the implementation of the ceasefire agreement impossible," Seevarathnam Puleedevan, a senior figure in the Tigers, said yesterday.

"The government must take the responsibility for the negative atmosphere."

The Tigers' refusal came despite confirmation from the European ceasefire monitoring team that it was the Tigers who suggested new peace talks in the first place - and that it was Mr Puleedevan himself who had conveyed the message.

"We gave a very positive answer, and we said we will start talks immediately," the head of the government's peace secretariat, Palitha Kohona told reporters hours before the Tigers announced their refusal of talks.

Although the fully fledged fighting has been confined to the north and east, the violence has not.

On Saturday, the deputy head of the government peace secretariat, Kethesh Loganathan, was shot dead in the capital Colombo in an attack blamed on the Tigers.

And yesterday, two suspected Tigers swallowed cyanide capsules after they were arrested outside a Colombo police station with a car packed with explosives.

Cyanide capsules are standard issue to Tigers.

- INDEPENDENT