Sri Lanka:Sri Lanka is braced for further fighting with the foreign minister insisting conflict cannot be solved militarily, writes Tom Farrell.
Hopes that Sri Lanka can avoid sliding into all-out civil war were dealt a body blow on Friday after the killing of the Tamil Tigers' deputy leader.
SP Thamilselvan, director of the political wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was killed along with five other officers when the Sri Lankan airforce bombed Killinochchi, a town in the north of the island that serves as the Tigers' de facto capital.
As the movement's chief negotiator, Thamilselvan attended peace talks in Norway, Germany, Japan and Thailand. He also toured numerous countries, including Ireland, during the 2002-2006 ceasefire that had been brokered by Norway.
In one of his last interviews in July, Thamilselvan told The Irish Timesthat he had benefited from his visit to the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in Co Wicklow in October 2003.
"We had counselling from academics and officials from various parts of Ireland," he said. "In fact, we were planning to develop on it during our further visits to Ireland.
"Unfortunately, the [Sri Lankan] government saw to it that our visits to Europe were curtailed in many ways."
In April 2005 he met with Minister of State for Overseas Development Conor Lenihan during a visit to Dublin when he warned that the ceasefire was beginning to come apart. The flood of foreign aid after the December 26th, 2004 tsunami, when Irish people had donated €25 per head of population to disaster relief, had only led to bitter disputes over its distribution in LTTE-held areas.
Later that year, presidential elections in Sri Lanka brought the hawkish Mahinda Rajapaksa to power. Mr Rajapaksa accused the LTTE of simply using the ceasefire to re-supply and rearm.
The Tigers' objective is "Eelam" (Precious Land), a separate state for Sri Lanka's three million Tamil minority. The Tamils are predominantly, Hindu unlike the 15 million Sinhalese majority who are Buddhist.
When the ceasefire was called in early 2002, large tracts of the north and east were under LTTE control.
The Sri Lankan army has recently expelled the Tigers from their eastern territories. Many analysts believe a major offensive into the north is now imminent.
Some 300,000 Tamils live under LTTE rule in an area of jungle and savannah known as the Vanni. Recapturing this area is likely to be a slow and bloody process; the LTTE have at least 7,000 full-time fighters, divided into male and female companies and with an elite suicide bomber division, the Black Tigers.
On October 22nd, a Black Tiger unit of at least 21 male and female fighters managed to penetrate the hangar of the air force base of Anuradhapura. Using RPG-launchers and anti-tank weapons, they managed to destroy two Mi-24 military helicopters and an array of training and reconnaissance aircraft. All were killed in the attack and some Tigers, when cornered, detonated explosive-laden suicide belts rather than be captured.
The Black Tiger attack, in which at least 13 airmen died, was backed with bombing raids by the Vaan Puligal (Air Tigers), the small fleet of propeller aircraft maintained by the Tigers.
Although the surgical strike that killed Thamilselvan was undoubtedly revenge for that attack, foreign secretary Dr Palitha Kohona insists the government is prepared to negotiate a political settlement.
"The government is not committed to a military solution," he says. "It knows from experience, not only with the Tigers, but also watching other conflicts around the world, that a conflict of this nature is never resolved militarily."
Nevertheless, in the aftermath of Thamilselvan's death, the president's brother, Gotabhaya, a former army colonel who is now defence secretary, said that the LTTE leadership could be picked off "one by one" and that "this is just a message, that we know where their leaders are".
The LTTE's navy, known as the Sea Tigers, maintain a fleet of cargo ships along with high-speed attack craft. Last month, the Sri Lankan navy sunk a 3,000-ton cargo ship, the Matsusima at an unprecedented distance of 700 nautical miles, one of several Sea Tiger vessels sunk in 2007.
This latest initiative puts the LTTE's supply lines of weaponry and ammunition in danger. The government has increased defence expenditure by 45 per cent to $1.29 billion in 2007, even as the Sri Lankan rupee falls against the dollar and inflation reaches 19.6 per cent. Since 1983, at least 70,000 people have died in the conflict.
Tourism, which accounts for 3 per cent of Sri Lanka's gross domestic product, plummeted by 24 per cent in the first six months of this year. Sri Lanka's central bank estimates that growth rates for the $26 billion economy will drop in 2008 regardless of the course of the war.