Jan 11, 2008 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s government said Friday it was pressing ahead with efforts to defeat the Tamil Tigers and dismissed rebel talk of restoring a ceasefire. Presidential spokesman Chandrapala Liyanage said the rebels had made no formal offer to revive a truce, playing down a statement from the Tigers the previous day that they wanted to revive to a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire.
“We have not been told either by the Tigers or the Norwegians,” Liyanage told AFP. “All we see is contradictory statements from them and we will not respond to claims in the media.
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“We will maintain our military operations against the Tigers, and by February 4 we will unveil a plan to politically solve the ethnic conflict,” he added.
Sri Lanka’s government withdrew from the tattered ceasefire last week, arguing that there was “no point of having any attempt to come to a settlement with a terrorist outfit.
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The rebel’s leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, had also said in November that peace talks with the island’s ethnic Sinhalese majority were a waste of time and that his ethnic army was ready for all-out war.
On Thursday, however, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil