Category: Politics

May 30, 2006 (AFP) – Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels lined up and shot dead 12 construction workers in an execution style massacre in the island’s restive eastern province, the military said Tuesday.A total of 14 construction workers from the majority Sinhalese community had been taken away by suspected Tamil Tiger rebels on Monday, military spokesman […]

May 30, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s president Tuesday ruled out military action against the Tamil Tigers as international donors warned the two sides to halt a slide back to war and police found the bodies of 12 victims of an execution-style massacre.In what Western diplomats here saw as a last ditch attempt to stall […]

May 29, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lanka was Monday banking on the European Union to ban Tamil Tiger rebels this week, but analysts and officials warned that proscription was unlikely to save a collapsing ceasefire at home. Norway’s International Development Minister Erik Solheim, who held talks with Sri Lankan leaders on Friday, warned that the […]

May 29, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lanka Monday banked on the European Union to ban the Tamil Tigers even as the rebels said they would agree to more talks to shore up the implementation of a fragile ceasefire.The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) face the “terrorist” label across the 25-member European Union bloc […]

May 29, 2006 (AFP) – The United Nations agency for refugees warned Sri Lankans on Monday against fleeing troubled areas and making a “perilous journey” to neighbouring India. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said at least 10 people drowned while making a dangerous crossing in May of the Palk Straits, the narrow […]

May 28, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lankan authorities Sunday found the mutilated bodies of seven local tourists believed to have been killed by an explosion in a wildlife sanctuary near a conflict zone, police said.Five of the bodies could be identified — two women and three men — while the remains of two others were […]

May 28, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lankan police Sunday detained the drivers of 18 vehicles trying to smuggle explosives across a de facto frontier post into the government-controlled part of the Jaffna peninsula, officials said.The private vehicles were stopped at the Muhamalai checkpoint after dogs sniffed out plastic explosives during a routine check, a military […]

May 28, 2006 (AFP) – Hopes of ending Sri Lanka’s ethnic bloodshed have hit rock bottom after peacebroker Norway failed to arrange talks on saving a collapsing ceasefire, diplomats and officials said Sunday.Oslo’s efforts were complicated by a looming European Union ban on the Tamil Tiger rebels, who threatened to respond by scrapping the truce […]

May 28, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s key foreign aid donors will meet to reevaluate the troubled nation’s faltering peace process this week at a meeting in Tokyo as blood continues to be spilt in the south Asian nation. Japan’s peace envoy Yasushi Akashi is to host a meeting of the United States, the European […]

VIENNA, May 27, 2006 (AFP) – The European Union is expected to put Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers on its list of terrorist groups next week, a spokesman for the EU’s Austrian presidency said Saturday. The Palestinian group Hamas, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the armed Basque separatist group ETA are on it.The EU move, […]

NEW DELHI, May 27, 2006 (AFP) – Norway’s top peace envoy to Sri Lanka, Eric Solheim, said Saturday a major crisis was brewing in the tropical island and that it could be headed back to full-scale civil war. Norway was committed to its role as facilitator despite the problems in the situation, he said. “We […]