By withdrawing from the Norwegian-brokered ceasefire, signed in 2002 with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lankan government is only “legalising existing ground reality,” a government spokesman says. “The LTTE has violated the ceasefire agreement so many times and what we have done is basically legalise the existing ground situation,” Lakshman Hullugalle, director-general of the Media Centre for National Security, said.

Hullugalle’s assertion was in consonance with a statement made by the Sri Lankan mission to the UN in Geneva on Tuesday that the CFA “ended quite some time ago when the LTTE unilaterally returned to full-scale hostilities in December 2005.” Since the ceasefire agreement (CFA) was signed, the LTTE (also known as Tamil Tigers) has violated it 3,944 times, according to the records of the all-Scandinavian Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), which also holds that the government has violated it 359 times.

Most of the violations occurred after President Mahinda Rajapakse won office in November 2005 on a strong pro-Sinhalese, nationalist platform that has favoured a military solution to the long-festering ethnic conflcit in the island nation, that has pitted minority Tamils against the Sinhalese majority.

The LTTE’s immediate response to Rajapakse’s election was a series of bomb attacks on government forces in the north and the east of the country, killing some 400 personnel within the first two months of the new administration.

The armed forces responded four months later by lifting an LTTE blockade of water supplies to mainly Sinhalese and Muslim farmers in the east of the island.

Known as the Mavil Aru battle, government forces, through a land and air offensive against the LTTE, recaptured an area controlled by the rebels and opened the sluice gates in June 2006 to provide water to the farmers. Most people in Sri Lanka consider this battle as marking the end of the CFA.

The eviction of the LTTE from the east of the island, and the more recent targeted killing of two leading Tamil rebel figures, have convinced people that the country is close to being rid of the LTTE. According to the government, LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was himself injured in an air raid in November.

The peace movement, which consists mainly of foreign funded NGOs, has not been visible on the streets to protest against the withdrawal of the CFA, perhaps sensing that the public mood is overwhelmingly against them. Government sources, its Sinhala nationalist allies and even many people’s organisations have branded he rights NGOs as traitors and ‘dollar-chasing peace vendors.’

As SLMM members pack their bags to leave, the air force, navy and the army have mounted a major offensive to retake the LTTE stronghold of Wanni in the north of the country, which was recognised as LTTE territory in the CFA. Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway, that are members of the SLMM, responded to the government withdrawal from the CFA by warning that any hope of returnig to the negotiation table would now be difficult.

With the forces’ morale high, army commander Sarath Fonseka, who survived an LTTE attempt to assassinate him in April 2006, has told journalists that he hopes to finish off the LTTE before he retires at the end of the year.— IPS