Norway is launching a new bid to keep alive Sri Lanka's peace process, threatened by a potentially explosive split in the ranks of the rebel Tamil Tigers and a snap parliamentary election triggered by infighting between the president and prime minister.
Norwegian peace broker Erik Solheim arrival yesterday was scheduled to coincide roughly with the two-year anniversary of the landmark ceasefire signed between the Tigers and the government in February 2002.
But the unprecedented rebel rift has dealt the biggest test to the ceasefire so far, and one of the biggest blows to the Tigers since they began their insurrection in 1983. The Tigers don't tolerate dissent and usually kill anyone who challenges top commander Vellupillai Prabhakaran.
Eastern rebel commander Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, also known as Karuna, withdrew his 6,000 fighters from the 15,000-strong guerrilla army last week in a dispute with northern-based Prabhakaran over troop deployment.
He now says he is the target of an assassination operation.
The rebel split comes a month before parliamentary elections and mirrors deep divisions within the government.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga' and Prime Minister Wickre-mesinghe are locked in a power struggle that also threatens to derail efforts to end the 20-year civil war.
Muralitharan said too many eastern-based rebels were being redeployed to the north, and that northern-based Tamils were favored in the Tiger administration.
A group of Tamil residents in the east led by the area's Roman Catholic bishop, the Reverend Kingsley Swampillai, launched a bid to settle the rebel dispute.
The seven-member group, including the bishop, two priests and local businessmen and politicians, departed yesterday for the north to discuss reconciliation, a Catholic priest, the Reverend A.E. Devadason said.
"People are in a confused situation. Most people feel: `Why this division at this moment?,' especially when elections are around," he said.
Muralitharan sought last Thursday to negotiate his own ceasefire accord, a notion rejected by the government on Friday. On Saturday, the Tigers' leadership announced that Muralitharan was expelled, and the renegade warlord said on Sunday that his forces were on alert for attacks.
"We have reliable information that killer squads sanctioned by the northern leadership have been sent with the intention of attacking me and my forces," Muralitharan said by telephone.
"These moves can lead to internal killing" between breakaway forces and the main guerrilla army, he said.
There were no immediate plans for Solheim to meet with Muralitharan during the envoy's eight-day visit, but the rebel split would figure predominantly in his discussions, diplomats said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS