Rebel chief vows Sri Lankan Tamils will have own state
By Gandi Douglas,WNS Sri Lanka Correspondent
COLOMBO - The Tamil people of Sri Lanka have no choice but to have their own independent state, rebel chief Velupillai Prabhakaran declared, effectively ending the island's peace process. In his annual policy speech from a secret hideout, the Tamil Tiger leader accused the Colombo government of waging military and economic war against 2.5 million Tamils and that they were left "with no other option but an independent state." The declaration went back on a 2002 pledge to accept a federal solution under which the Tamils would enjoy broad autonomy. That commitment had opened the way for a ceasefire and Norwegian-brokered peace talks which collapsed in Geneva last month. However, President Mahinda Rajapakse, "by openly advocating attacks on our positions, has effectively buried the CFA (Ceasefire Agreement)," the head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) charged. "Our people are subjected to unprecedented assaults.
Arrests, imprisonment, and torture, rape and sexual harassment, murders, disappearance, shelling, aerial bombing, and military offensives are continuing unchecked," he said. Prabhakaran stopped short of declaring independence, but made it clear the peace process with the Sinhalese nationalist-led government was over. "It is now crystal clear that the Sinhala leaders will never put forward a just resolution to the Tamil national question," he said. "Therefore, we are not prepared to place our trust in the impossible and walk along the same old futile path."
In his November 2005 speech, Prabhakaran gave the government one year to come up with a political solution to Asia's longest-running ethnic conflict or face an escalation in the fighting. "He rejected our final call ... Instead, he (Rajapakse) intensified the war," while talking about peace, the LTTE chief said on Monday in a speech broadcast by Voice of Tamil radio from rebel-held territory in the north. "This dual war and peace approach is fundamentally flawed. It is not possible to find a resolution by marginalising and destroying the freedom movement." The policy speech was keenly-awaited by Sri Lankan leaders as well as foreign capitals after last year's deadline and an upsurge in violence that has killed more than 3,400 people in 2006.
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