With the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam wiped out, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Tuesday offered equal rights for Tamils through a political solution, but stressed that it won't be 'imported'. He said the government does not accept the military solution as final and that his aim was to provide equal rights to all communities. Rajapaksa said it was necessary to give the Tamil people the freedoms that are the right of people in all other parts of the country.
'The struggle for Tamil equality and justice for Tamils did not start with the LTTE and will not end with LTTE. I am not saying that the LTTE has come to an end.'
The first presidential elections in Sri Lanka in the post-LTTE era evoked enthusiastic response on Tuesday from the voters who turned up in large numbers to decide the fate of incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa and his ex-army chief Sarath Fonseka amid blasts in Tamil heartland of Jaffna. People started lining up even before the beginning of the polls, which opened across the country at 7:00 am. Voting will close at 4:00 pm.
Accusing Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse of abdicating his responsibility to save civilians in the restive north, Tamil Americans have asked United States President Barack Obama to send his forces to the strife-torn nation to save the lives of innocent people. "This is pure and simple genocide. We are asking the Obama administration to intervene to save the Tamils of Sri Lanka by sending its army there," they said.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam led by its supremo V Prabhakaran had aspired to carve out a big Tamil elam state extending from near Colombo to the southern part of Sri Lanka, the island nation's top defence official has said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has asked Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to devise a political solution to the ongoing ethnic conflict in the country.
At least ten people were killed and 20 others, including a cabinet minister, injured in a suicide attack by a suspected Liberation Tiger of Tamil Eelam bomber near a mosque in the southern Sri Lankan city of Matara on Tuesday. The suicide bomber struck during a ceremony to mark Eid-e-Milad-ud-Nabi, the birth anniversary of Prophet Mohammad, near the mosque in Akuresha area in Matara, police said.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has decided to cut short his visit to Nepal in the wake of Tuesday's terror attack on his country's cricketers in Pakistan, after inking two agreements with the country
Doctors treating displaced Tamils in the government-run welfare camps in Sri Lanka's north have written a letter to Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa complaining about the inadequate facilities and shortage of medical staff.
Indian fishermen trawling near Katchatheevu were in for a big surprise on Sunday when Sri Lankan navalmen not only allowed them to fish but also offered them soft drinks and sweets.
Within days of his appointment as International Advisor on Information Technology to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, IT czar N R Narayana Murthy on Wednesday quit from the post citing personal reasons.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has promised the United Nations that his forces would protect Tamil civilians as it pushes ahead with its offensive to defeat the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Rajapaksa gave this assurance over telephone to UN Secretary General Ban ki Moon, as his forces overran the last base of the sea Tigers near Mulaittivu, cutting off all their escape routes.
In the wake of the visit of India Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, to Colombo for talks with the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Tamilnet, the English language web site associated with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, has disseminated on January 30, 2009, an article attributed to "a political analyst in Vanni," which has accused "the present Indian establishment run by Congress of waging its own proxy war in the island of Sri Lanka, concurrent to Colombo's war
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday held talks with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa during which key issues, including bilateral and regional, was discussed.
The first batch of 2,400 Tamils lodged in camps for internally displaced persons in Sri Lanka were sent back home on Thursday as assured by the Sri Lankan government, said Dravida Munnetra Kazhgam Member of Parliament T R Baalu, who led a team of Tamil Nadu MPs to the island nation.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Wednesday said that the government's fight was only against terrorism and that democracy will soon be restored in the embattled north of the country. Rajapaksa also said that the state was not against the Tamil people but against terrorists.
At least 32 Indian fishermen were arrested by the Sri Lankan navy for allegedly poaching in the country's waters off the coast of the Delft islet in Jaffna.
After the announcement of the death of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam chief V Prabhakaran, the Congress on Monday said the Sri Lankan issue is a sensitive one and External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to discuss the matter. "Sri Lanka is a sensitive issue, our foreign minister is meeting the prime minister. The government of India will contact the Sri Lankan government to ascertain the facts,"said a Congress leader.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam today virtually conceded that its de-facto capital Kilinochchi has fallen to the Sri Lankan Army, saying that the security forces have entered a "virtual ghost town" as the whole infrastructure of Tamil Tigers have shifted to the northeast.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday appealed to the Tamil civilians, still trapped in the No-fire Zone, to come over to the "cleared areas" and assured that the government will ensure their safety.
More than 35,000 trapped Tamil civilians on Monday made a dramatic breakout from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam-controlled areas in Sri Lanka's embattled north, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa handing out a last 24-hour deadline for Tiger supremo V Prabhakaran and his top aides to surrender. Proclaiming that the mass exodus indicated that a 'complete defeat' of the Tigers was imminent, Rajapaksa warned that after this, his forces would make an 'all out' bid.
The United States has said it is working with India to find a political solution in Sri Lanka now that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam "is now flat on its back having lost most of its leaders," but has no intention of putting pressure on New Delhi to change its policy toward Sri Lanka, which has been perceived by some Tamils to be favoring the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse.
The Pak defence delegation's visit comes at a crucial time when the Lankan military, emboldened by Colombo's withdrawal from the six-year old ceasefire agreement with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, has stepped up its offensive against the rebels.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said that he had never met slain Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran and would have preferred to chat with him."I would have preferred to bring him here and have a chat with him. I have never seen this man," Rajapaksa said. The President also said he was not at all interested in knowing how the LTTE chief had been killed.
Seeking to address New Delhi's concerns over the worsening conflict in Sri Lanka and its impact on Tamil civilians, Colombo on Friday said it would send a high-level delegation to India to keep it abreast on the prevailing situation in the strife-torn island nation.
In a no-holds barred address, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has dared Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam chief Velupillai Prabhakaran to a one-on-one clash with him. He said that he would challenge Prabhakaran to clash with him directly to avoid a killing spree targeting innocent civilians, Parliamentarians and Ministers.
During Rajapakse's nationally televised address on the country's 61st independence day, he broke into Tamil, assuring the people of the community in the embattled north and other parts of the country of their well-being and equality in status.
It is not advisable for India to be seen by large sections of the Sri Lankan Tamils as not only anti-LTTE -- rightly so -- but also as anti-Tamil.
Sri Lanka on Friday decided to go ahead with its cricket tour of Pakistan to fill in for a cancelled Indian trip, putting an end to the uncertainty on the fate of the series.
'We have not announced a ceasefire. We have only said that aerial bombardment and shelling will not be carried out,' he told CNN-IBN, the channel said in a release.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy on Tuesday urged Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa to meet Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo to work out a compromise to resolve the recurring issue of the arrest of Indian fishermen by the island nation's navy.
Lankan MP M K Sivajilingam of Pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance, said the Sri Lankan government's move to devolve powers to region is a 'joke played by them (Lankan government) on minority Tamils' who have 'not been able to lead a peaceful life in their own nation'.
Claiming that rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were 'receiving an unprecedented defeat,' Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Monday vowed that government troops would flush out the Tigers from their Wanni heartlands in the north.
Ruling out talks with the LTTE till the outlawed outfit agreed to disarm, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has accused Britain of double standards in dealing with the global menace of terrorism.
"If Dr Singh makes it to Colombo, which would be the first in several years, it would undoubtedly be a big blow to LTTE, which is why pro-LTTE parties in Tamil Nadu are objecting it."
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, who had boycotted the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will meet him on June 3 to take up issues relating to the state's growth.
Any form of entanglement with India or the US on the strategic plane will be anathema to Sri Lanka's Rajapaksa rulers, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
With his forces encircling the fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tami Eelam in a tiny strip of land in the northern region of the country, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse held out an olive branch to the Tamil Tigers on Monday, asking them to lay down arms after which they will be 'readily accepted and treated humanely'. The President said all facilities would be made available for the LTTE cadres who lay down their arms and surrender.
On January 27, B Muralidhar Reddy, a distinguished journalist with The Hindu was taken to the war zone of Mullaithivu, along with other Sri Lankan journalists by the Sri Lankan defence ministry.
Bolstered by American and Pakistani support, Colombo is increasingly insensitive to Indian concerns over the plight of the Tamils.
