CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Ceasefire Agreement in Sri Lanka ends

Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario .

January 3, 2008

The Editor (Letters)
THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

Sir:

It was good news to know that the Sri Lankan government had decided to end the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) which was signed on February 22, 2002 with the Tamil Tigers.

I am not certain why they waited this long as by July 14, 2006, the Scandinavian Peace Keeping Monitors said that the Tamil Tigers had violated the CFA 7,308 times compared to the Government forces who had violated just under 100 times.

The Tamil Tigers showed their smarts to the world as from the very beginning, the primary motive for them was to expand their domination over areas in the North and East controlled by the government. In that process they were on their way to get rid of the government forces from the Jaffna peninsula well in advance of a negotiated settlement.

Every time the Tamil Tigers met with the Sri Lankan government officials outside Sri Lanka, facilitated by the Norwegians, it was reduced to a Gong Show by not discussing a political solution of the ethnic conflict, but trying to get the security, strategic and economic restrictions operating in the North and East lifted for their benefit. And the CFA gave them the window of opportunity to sneak in 11 ship loads of armoury, built an air strip at Iranamadu and brought in containers without having been checked by customs in which they had four dismantled single engine propeller driven Zlin-143 aircraft which they converted them into night-bombers. These planes were used to attack the Sri Lanka Airforce base at Katunayake and the Anuradhapura Airforce Base destroying and damaging quite a few Government fighter aircraft.

The Tamil Tigers met their Waterloo on July 20, 2006 when they blocked water from the Mavil Aru anicut to flood 30,0000 acres of paddy land and drinking water for 15,000 Sinhalese farming people. That was when Eelam War IV began, and the out come was that the Tamil Tigers were kicked out of the Eastern Province by the Government Forces and now they are on the run. Confined to the Wanni strip in the North of the island, the Tamil Tiger de facto territory is slowly but surely been stripped away and taken over by the government forces.

The CFA was just a joke which had absolutely no value other than it existing on paper creating an impediment to getting rid of terrorism in Sri Lanka. The International voices, including that of Canada thought that the CFA was the best thing that happened to Sri Lanka, next to a poor man's plate of rice and chicken curry. They were fooled and taken down the garden path by the Tamil Tigers who became maestros in that..

Asoka Weerasinghe

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